Who the fudge is Benjamin Judge?

Hey buddy! Hey pal! How y’doin’? Y’wanna write a book yeah? Being doing that writing huh? Maybe I could help you with that. I’m just a poor middle class guy from the sticks of course, not one of those hoity-toity critics, but I’m happy to help you. I remember my Uncle Chuck used to say, “Hey sport, you can’t read a book without taking a shit”. That’s right. I said “taking a shit” and not “creating a secret vol-au-vent”. I’m not trying to offend anyone. I’m just using dialogue in a way that feels real. Hell, I’m just a poor middle class guy from the sticks, I probably can’t even spell vol-au-vent!

You need to watch out for clichés. Most people wouldn’t know a cliché if it bit them on the ass! And don’t use adverbs either, because some bad writers have used them, so that’s that for adverbs. I remember reading a bad book and I didn’t like it. It wasn’t good. I didn’t like it. As my Uncle Billy Bob used to say, “are you writing a book or taking a shit?” That’s right. I said “taking a shit”, and not “secreting a brown article”. I’m not trying to offend anyone. I’m just being true to my poor middle class roots. I’m just a normal guy, like you, who thinks that normal guys like to read books about normal guys that are written by normal guys. And if those hoity-toity critics don’t like it, they can bite my ass!

Sometimes I look at people like Joyce and Kafka and I think, “why didn’t you write more books guys?” What were they doing? Taking a shit? Yeah, that’s right, I said “taking a shit”, and not “imagining cloud biscuits out of my flesh ravine”. I’m not trying to offend anyone. It’s just that to a poor middle class guy like me, I can’t see what they were doing all that time. I edit my work twice and then I’m done. I’m a normal guy writing normal books for normal guys. And I bet you are too. I think we’re gonna be pals, you and me. I think we’re gonna be pals.

I was reading the Paris Review interview with James Dickey earlier today, and this passage has been floating around in my head ever since:

INTERVIEWER

It seems Allen Ginsberg is the diametrical opposite of you.

DICKEY

I certainly hope so. I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that. They damn themselves to a life of inconsequentiality when they could have been doing something more useful. They could have been garbage collectors, or grocery-store managers. Poetry is, as Yeats has said, “a high and lonely profession.” It is very easy, too easy, to pick up on the latest thing in the newspapers and write a poem. That’s all Ginsberg does. He just doesn’t have any talent. I’ll do a Ginsbergian poem or a Robert Bly poem for you right now.

I don’t agree with Dickey, entirely, but I do think he makes a valid point. Reaction is not writing and, by and large opinion and literature do not mix well. And while poetry can be the most obvious sinner, fiction does it to. A call-to-arms poem is embarrassing, but a preach novel is unbearable. Think of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, undoubtedly one of the most politically important novels ever written, but also unquestionably awful as an actual book.

As for Ginsberg… well, I do like some of his stuff, but I’d rather read Stevie Smith. Wouldn’t you?

And his influence…

Changing the subject slightly, what do you think about that quote? Is Dickey wrong or right? Should poets learn different forms? Should prose writers practice different styles? Or can we do whatever we like now? Is form dead?

Oh let’s have a discussion about literature. Let us do.

I am a sucker for the truly awful. As Olly Richards, in this month’s Empire, points out “There’s something edifying about a really terrible movie. It’s a cinematic rush different from that produced by the truly brilliant, but no less heady”. The same goes for tv, books, music, everything. When someone put a link to this cruel, cruel review in the Observer of The Book of Kings by James Thackara, my instinct was not to laugh and point (well, maybe a little) but to buy it on Amazon in the hope it as awful as the review claims.

While not as elusive as things so-good-they-are-bad (Finnegan’s Wake, Mrs Dalloway, Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River) the genuine so-bad-it-is-good film/book/album etc is still a rare beast. The first twenty-or-so minutes of Francis Ford Copolla’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula are so wonderfully appalling that you watch them with a feeling approaching nirvana, but pretty soon the film just becomes boring and overlong. All those mega-super-shark vs Octo-lion films are trying to be so-bad-they-are-good, and so they end up being just plain bad. The reverse is true too. For example, R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet is not so-bad-it-is-good, it is good. It is messed up, and head-scratchingly bizarre, yes, but intentionally so. I Believe I Can Fly is possibly so bad it is good, but Trapped in the Closet is just good.

Usually, as in the case of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the so-bad-it’s-good work is created by someone who is capable of greatness. It is no fun just to watch somebody fail. Anybody can fail. Ideally you will be almost continually thinking “oh wow! Did they mean that?” as you watch/read/listen. When a genuinely talented person pushes themselves the results can often be catastrophic, but rarely boring. (Though sometimes they are – The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus springs immediately to mind.)

I have started Thackara’s The Book of Kings, a very serious novel about the second-world war. There are no jokes. I have laughed out loud four times. The sentences are magnificently bad. So much so that you start to wonder whether it is not Thackara, but the concept of the sentence itself which is in the wrong. Surely if the concept of the sentence was acceptable, then Thackara could, by the law of averages, produce one that didn’t scratch your eyes on its journey to your mind.

The first line of the novel is:

“On a clear June morning late in the 1960′s, a convertible blue two-seater started quickly southeast from Calais down files of poplars, long rising and falling over the great gray-green and yellow squared carpets of farmland.”

The third line of the novel is:

“The thin-legged American at the wheel, who was called Jim, raised his voice.”

Or how about this:

“”Hitler’s war was the big one.” Jim murmured the name that had killed his father.”

Or this:

“”Yes” Albert laughed bitterly.”

Thackara is either a genius or a madman, or both, or neither. I’ll keep reading and find out.

I have a confession to make. I like ducks.

No. Not like that. Jeeezus! What is it with you people?

I like ducks. They are a bit bobby-on-the-water and that. And geese too. Bit bigger but still quite bobby. Not so much swans. They are alright, but not very colourful, and they bob less, being considerably bigger. Waders. Waders are pretty cool. They do that dippy thing with their heads. Gulls-

Anyway… You get the point… Birds…

I’m not really a bird watcher. I don’t really go looking for birds that often. I’m certainly not a ‘birder’; partly because I have no interest in seeing rare birds, but mostly because THE WORD BIRD IS A NOUN AND NOT A VERB. I am just a guy, a guy who likes birds, and likes to have a basic knowledge of what the different ones are called.

The world is a zoo, full of infinite variety. Whether you believe that the staggering number of animal species on earth arrived here via evolution or by God’s hand, you cannot escape the fact that whichever process it was, it worked. Imagine if people spent less time arguing about the how, and more time just watching all the different sorts of ducks.

No. More. War.

There. I said it. No more war. You cannot watch ducks and go to war. They are far too calming. What with them being dead bobby-on-the-water and that.

Essay deadlines loom so the blog is going to remain quiet for a few days yet.

What have I learned from the MA so far? A lot about structure. A lot about narrative technique. A lot about my own writing.

Oh, and I have a first chapter of a novel. Done. And the second chapter is going to have a cat in it.

I don’t want to appear excitable, but 2012 is shaping up to be a super-mega-year. And today I have two new things for you to get involved with…

First, 3hundredand65. 365 storytellers take on 366 days in 2012. Each morning a different writer adds one tweets worth of prose, then during the day, Dave Kirkwood adds the illustration to accompany the text. This is already looking incredible. The drawings are not only really good in their own right, but also provide a fascinating experiment in collaboration. I love a good collaboration me. The drawings will become the cement between the texty bricks, keeping order and determining the shape of the story. (does cement determine shape or am I mixing metaphors? and it’s mortar isn’t it, not cement? no wonder my homemade swimming pool fell over)

Go and check it out (3hundredand65, not my homemade swiming pool). Sign up to add a days worth of writing. And keep an eye on those drawings because they are being auctioned for the Teenage Cancer Trust. All the details are on the site.

Second, is Top Ten, a brand new website where you can share you own personal top tens. This is the brain child of Dan Carpenter, a man who already has a large family of healthy, brilliant brain children. Write him a Top Ten, or go and read my Top Ten Animals that have caused me to Experience Fear, Shame and/or Discomfort, or both. Yeah. Do both. Great stuff. Ta.

I love 2012.

I’m just guessing, but did some of you make new year’s resolutions about getting some stories written, and sent out to magazines, and published? Well, stick Cutaway magazine on your list of places to send your very best stuff because it is going to be a little bit special. Co-editors Craig Pay and Dave Schofield are creating something that is going to not only look beautiful, with a strong, clean design among their highest priorities, but also be filled with some superb writing. In Mr Pay’s own words ”This will be a literary magazine, but we are also accepting genre submissions. Weird, surreal, borderline genre as well as straight-up literary prose and poetry.”

Now, nothing gets my word juices flowing more than the meetings of literature and genre. I am excited, and you should be too.

Right, details…

Cutaway magazine submissions page

Cutaway on twitter is @cutawaymagazine

Cutaway on Facebook is this

Follow, like, tweet, ask, write, create, go, go, go!

The start of January is a good time to adjust the cuffs and collar of your blog, so it is all ready and spruced for the new year. Last night I decided to update my blog list. So I did that. And there we are.

But, that wasn’t enough for me. Oh no! The excitement does not stop there. I have also added a new thing on the side of the blog on which I will count the books I have read this year.

One of my half-resolutions this year is to finish every book if I start reading. This means I will, hopefully, become a more discerning and careful reader, and a more patient and respectful human being. It will also means I will think really, really hard before starting any books by Roberto Bolaño in the next twelve months.

I have a big year of reading planned. At the top of my ‘to read’ pile are books by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Evie Wyld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Paul Metcalf, Peter Wild, and Socrates Adams. (the latter being on my virtual ‘to read’ list as it is still the responsibility of Amazon at the moment. I have already read the sublime Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (now that, ladies and gentlemen, is prose). I’m determined to work my way through A Dance to the Music of Time. I’m going to get round to finishing Infinite Jest. I’m going to read lots of more popular stuff for school, which means I’ll finally force myself through Cloud Atlas and get to re-read Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (which I last read in a rather unglamorous hotel room in Vienna. Twin beds do not a romantic getaway make.)

My reading tip for 2012 though is not a book but a website. Or at least part of a website. The Paris Review have made all their interviews with writers available to read online, for like free and that. If you are a reader they are interesting, but they are essential if you are a writer, or if you are becoming a writer. (That sounds so much nicer than ‘trying to be a writer’ doesn’t it? I might use that again.) They are essential because they are not only about what but also how writers write. They are worth a thousand how-to-write guides. There are over three hundred interviews, and they are with the big hitters of literature.

Anyway this is the link. Enjoy.

I don’t really make proper New Year’s Resolutions, but like most people I do sort of semi-consciously decide to try to eat fewer mini rolls, spend more time writing, spend less time guiding Walsall to European glory on FIFA, be less fat, freebase less crack etc, etc…

One of my ‘things’ this year is being less of a mind-hermit. Which is to say, be more friendly and nice and that, and be generally less of a moan-pot. I know. I know. But I can try can’t I.

In an attempt to achieve this unrealistic goal I have come up with a three-pronged attack:

1. Watch as little television as possible. (Because this is what makes me most grumpy. I only have to think about Michael Parkinson, or that terrible, terrible git who points out the obvious on Come Die Inside With Me, to send my blood pressure soaring.)
2. Go out when I say I’m going to go out. (And not sit at home all sad because I didn’t make the effort to catch a train)
3. Embrace Facebook and generally stop being so sniffy about it.

I love three-pronged attacks. Don’t you?

I haven’t really used Facebook in the last twelve months. I mostly love the Twitter. But they are different things with different uses. There are those event things, and well, you don’t need me to tell you how Facebook works do you?

So, if I haven’t sent you a friend request, friend request me. Let’s be Facebook friends. We can write on each other’s walls. You can tell me if I was correct to use an apostrophe in that last sentence. You get to see photographs of me swimming in a pool in Spain.

Friend me.

Welcome to 2012. Welcome to my big news.

Some of you may remember, two years ago, while everyone else was getting excited about England being rubbish at football (well, English men being rubbish at football. The women play a considerably more entertaining game) we were having a World Cup of our own: The Big Exciting World Cup Literary Distraction Extravaganza of Wondrous Delights: which was won by Elizabeth Baines.

Guess what?

2012 is the year of The Big Amazing Literary Olympics of Spectacular Brilliance. Yes, I’m offering you a way out. An escape. A refuge from round-the-clock jingoistic gubbins. When you are surrounded by frantically waving plastic union jacks, when John Inverdale’s face is burnt onto your retinas, here will be where you can turn to. I will not mention the Olympics on this blog, in either a positive or negative fashion, for the entirety of this year. That is a promise. I will however, be all about the The Big Amazing Literary Olympics of Spectacular Brilliance.

We will have an opening ceremony on the 27th of July and a closing ceremony on the 12th of August, and in between those we have fifteen days of non-sporting (in both senses of the word) action. There will be thirty events, thirty gold medals up for grabs, and you, YES YOU, could be among the competitors. I’ll be honest, I haven’t quite worked out how yet, or how I am going to reproduce synchronised swimming as a literary competition, but stick with me. This IS going to happen. And it is going to be huge.

From now until the 27th of July, there will be a big The Big Amazing Literary Olympics of Spectacular Brilliance special, every Sunday, on this blog. To get you in the mood and that.

So, shall we begin? In the comments box, list me some writers you want to see competing for their countries in seven months time. List me them to the maximum. Do it. Do it. Their dreams are in your hands.

…Events

• Björk – Manchester International Festival – July. People often tell me to smile. Well, if they had been at this concert they would have got all the smiles they needed for a lifetime. The best concert I have ever seen; I spent the whole time grinning like an idiot, crying like a child, or staring like a slack-jawed yokel. My brain exploded on no less than seventeen occasions.
• Re:Tale – Jigsaw – Manchester – November. For one night only, one of Manchester’s nicest looking clothes shops became a venue for the stories of Dan Carpenter, Nici West, JP Daly, Nick Garrard, Dave Hartley, and Fat Roland. We were shown from room to room, each one with a story inside. The stories were great, there was free wine, it was an unforgetable night.
• The Reading – Untitled Gallery – Manchester – July. You sit in an art gallery and write whatever comes into your head. The results are beamed out across the city and shown on screens in the city’s art galleries. Live. 70 writers took part. It broke our minds. Writing turned up to 11.

…Views

• Morcambe Bay from the Midland Hotel. In January, Jo and I went to Morecambe. It is a town that has fallen on hard times that just happens to look out onto one of the most beautiful views in Britain. With the right investment, Morecambe could be one of Britain’s great towns. The beach, the bay, the mountains. We watched the sun set as we ate afternoon tea. I had the sun in my eyes a bit (because I’m a gentleman and I changed seats) but that couldn’t spoil the view. And we went bowling and found a big charity bookshop. Great holiday.
• Central Park from the top of the Rockefeller Center. Again with the sunset; this time over Central Park. Manhattan is impossibly beautiful. Half of you already know this. The other half of you need to get there soon.
• The view from the study. From the window next to me I can see Blackstone Edge. It changes colours with the seasons.

…Moments

• Manchester Blog Awards Ceremony. It’s all about me isn’t it? This list? So it would be silly not to remember this. I shared the Best Writing on a Blog prize and was one of the winners of The Real Story competition. I read my non-fiction story about my dad, Drinking Coffee with my Father in the Most Expensive Restaurant in Manchester, and some people cried. I felt like a proper writer, which is nice when it happens. If you can put up with listening to my voice you can listen to my story here. (or you can read it)
• Getting onto the MA course at Manchester. I am a third of the way through the course already. I have made new friends, discovered new writers, made friends with new writers, discovered new friends, made new writers, friended new mades, dismade frew nends, you name it… I have also, though you may not believe it reading that last sentence, learnt a whole lot about writing.
• Just sitting about, watching House, with Jo. Not a specific moment, but a whole bunch of them, and not even watching House particularly, but just spending time with Jo. I only mentioned House because we have watched rather a lot of it this year and it makes Jo laugh; and Jo laughing makes me happy. We will whitewash over the fact that a lot of the time she is laughing because she thinks I am House. We will not mention that at all.

…Blogs

• Screen150. Winner of the Blog of the Year award at the Manchester Blog Awards, and rightly so. All sorts of interesting people reviewing films in exactly 150 words. Go and have a look. Even better, write them a review. They’d like that.
• Rob Blog. Wait. Is it actually called Rob Blog? That is a terrible name for a blog. I’d never noticed. Anyway… Rob Blog (really? It’s called Rob Blog?) is Rob Cutforth’s blog (So we can see where he got the idea for the name, but really? Rob Blog?) He is a Canadian. He thinks that Britain is, on occasion, a bit shit. He is right. He is also funny. So, funny, correct, and what else? Oh yes. Bitterly cruel. I like a bit of that. Good work sir! (Although, I would like to bring to your attention the crapness of Canadian blog names: Rob Blog, Margaret Blog, Alanis Blog, Bondar Blog, Guujaaw Blog: Come on guys! Your first idea isn’t necessarily your best.)
• The Plashing Vole. Christ this guy posts a lot, but what he has to say is, on the odd occasion, worth reading. OK so you have to skip the bits where he is just cut-and-pasting bits of government reports on, oh I don’t know, houses or something, or trying you to convince you the first Cranberries album or some other bollocks is actually really good, or fooling himself (and nobody else) that Stoke play Barca-esque football, but if you can do that you will find the heart of a good egg beating underneath. Plus, plus, he has, it seems, begun to go completely mad. This year has seen him call for the NSPCC to be disbanded because their advertising slogan isn’t a proper sentence, asked for Jeremy Clarkson to be shot “in his ass”, and suggested all grey squirrels to be sown together and thrown, all live and squiggly, into a pit containing the children of David Cameron “all covered in peanut satay”. Actually he might not have suggested those things exactly; I tend to tune out after the first two or three lines. (Merry Christmas Mr Vole xx)

…Restaurants

• Aumbry – Prestwich – Manchester – UK. There is something immensely satisfying about the fact that Manchester’s best restaurant is in North Manchester. Those Dids-orlton-ites think they so good. Well they haven’t got Aumbry, so psssthhhp. Jo and I split the bill on the tasting menu as a combined birthday present (our birthdays are only days apart) and it was one of my best birthdays ever. If you live in Manchester, and you like food, you need to put Aumbry on your to-do list for 2012. Seriously good food.
• Momofuku ssäm bar – New York – USA. I am not ashamed to say that I ordered my lunch, ate my lunch, got up, walked back to the counter, and ordered the same meal again. David Chang turns the steamed pork bun into ambrosia (the food of the gods, not the tinned custard you cretins).
• Yolk – Chicago – USA. Yolk isn’t really a restaurant restaurant, more a breakfast restaurant/cafe type place, but it typifies one of the lessons I learnt in the US: that Americans are better than us at so many things. If you had to sum up Britain’s attitude to breakfast in one sentence, that sentence would be “You can’t have that for breakfast.” In the US the sentence would be “What would you like for breakfast?” The choice in Yolk was am-az-ing, (and actually I could name a dozen or so places we had breakfast in America that each put us to shame) and everything was good. We are so proud of our crappy fry ups in Britain. We have never lived.

…Shops

• Quimby’s – Chicago – USA. If there was one thing I could transplant to Manchester it would be Quimby’s. Quimby’s is a, really quite big, shop full of comics, pamphlets, books, manifestos, anthologys, and everything else hand-made, independently produced or interesting. Walking round you got the impression that everything that is produced in Chicago gets sold in Quimby’s. So. Much. New. Writing.
• Unicorn – Chorlton – Manchester – UK. Best fruit and veg in the North West. Realy nice staff. They are all a bunch of hippies, but you know, in a good way.
• The Library, Charity Shops and Pawn Shops of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, UK. Perhaps the only upside of Rochdale’s economy falling out of its bottom is the ridiculous amount of stuff going cheap in the city centre. You want Franzen’s Freedom in hardback? That will be 25p. You want rare Dick Bruna books? 50p. You want the complete Soprano’s boxset? £10. At the moment, a price war between Cash Converters and Simply Cash has seen all DVDs reduced to £1. OK, so morally I may as well be looting museums after an air raid, but somebody has got to buy all this stuff. It may as well be me.

…Books.

• Wild Abandon – Joe Dunthorne. This, really, is the sort of book that should be winning the Man Booker Prize. Not because it is better, or more important, than the books that were on the shortlist (which is, after all, just a matter of opinion) but because it is not only very funny, fiercely intelligent, and beautifully observed, but also ready made for a large audience. If it were a breakfast cereal, it would be rice crispies; full of snap, crackle and pop. But it is not a breakfast cereal. It is a book. I have no idea where I’m going with this. Just read it, yeah.
• Christopher Reid – Selected Poems. a best of, from one of the daddies of English poetry. Essential reading.
• Quickies. OK, I did say favourite books, so I make no apology for putting a book I helped produce into my top three books of the year. But even if I hadn’t been involved, the writers in this anthology (Socrates Adams, David Gaffney, Emma-Jane Unsworth, Chris Killen, Daniel Carpenter, Valerie O’Riordan, Kim McGowan, Sarah Hilary, Claire Massey, Clare Kirwan etc, etc) really are representative of some of the exciting things happening in writing in the North West at the moment. And we made them all write dirty stuff too. Which is nice.But as well as being a great read, Quickies is also the product of my friendship with the very lovely and impossibly talented Dave Hartley, Fat Roland, Tom Mason, and Clare Conlon. Merry Christmas you wonderful people. I can’t wait to see what we come up with in 2012.

…Films

• 13 Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku). I do love a samurai film, and this one has it all. Great acting, beautiful scenery, a tightly wound plot, one of cinema’s truly great villains, the odd deeply disturbing bit, superb camera work, and a big fuck off fight at the end. Who could ask for more?
• Meek’s Cutoff. So I went to see this film at the cinema, with about eight other people, and I thought it was amazing, and almost everyone else thought it was crap, but it wasn’t crap, it was amazing, and it was called Meek’s Cutoff. This film is brilliant. Oh God, man, the colours! The cinematography is breathtaking. The colours! The colours!
• Submarine. Pure pleasure from beginning to end. I have bought a copy on dvd, and I am saving it for Christmas Day. Yeah. That good.

…Albums

• Björk – Biophilia. Without wanting to stray into hyperbole, if you rolled up all the music from this millenium into a big ball of music it wouldn’t even be half the amazingness of Biophilia. That being said, Jo thinks it is just noise. It is all just a matter of opinion; though in this case, my opinion is the correct one.

• James Blake – James Blake. The sound of songs being pulled apart. The sound of the bones of songs. Lovely. One of my favourite moments of the year was watching the twitter reaction to the release of this album. My feed was full of hipsters proclaiming it as the second coming, almost to the exact second it entered the top ten. Then, immediately, the same people were saying it was overrated, not as good as the EPs, etc, etc. Stop trying so hard hipsters.
• Wu Lyf – Fire To The Mountain. Imagine for a second… this: What if everybody who spent the best part of a hundred pounds to see a fat Stone Roses clunk through a set of old shed (some of it 25 year-old shed) next year, had instead spent the same amount of money on music by current Manchester bands. It would be like a big anti-nostalgia-fest. Wouldn’t that be nice. Some of them might have bought this. It is really good. As good as the Stone Roses? Who can say. All I know is, when I hear We Bros on the radio I get excited, when I hear I Am The Resurrection on the radio (or indeed anywhere else) I think ‘oh Christ, not this again‘. Embrace the now.

Congratulations to Siân S. Rathore, the winner of the 3 Sentence Story Competition. Expect an e-mail soonish about the distribution of your prize.

Thank you to who everybody who entered, and who voted for the finalists. I got more entries than days in December, so not everyone got a go. Sorry about that. I really enjoyed reading your stories; particularly how you all approached the challenge in different ways.

It was good that wasn’t it? Maybe we can do it all again next year.

The Prize

The winner of the 3 Sentence Story Competition will win…

• A first edition of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (please don’t fatwa me, it is a really good book)
• A first edition of The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
• A first edition of Heavy Water and other stories by Martin Amis
• Darkmans by Nicola Barker (best book ever)
• The Character of Rain by Amélie Nothomb
• Series 1 of Being Human on dvd
• A dvd of Went The Day Well (which is, like, well good)
• A dvd of Heathers
• Some crap or other I have lying around to fill up the box
• The admiration of your peers

The Final

The four writers in the final are:

John Andrew Hutchison

He planned to be drunk by Doctor Who. It was the only way to survive a Christmas with his brother’s family. It was the only way to survive a Christmas Doctor Who.

Laura Maley

Her head pounded as she thought of how life might be from now on; cogs whirring, blood pumping, breath heaving. She dreaded and needed this exquisite pain accompanying every tiny, insistent movement. Three non-matching silver-flecked panels on the small flimsy colourful card: you lose.

Siân S. Rathore

I returned the tie-pin to Joseph six years after he’d discarded it in my room, where it skidded and bounced under our new bed like a minnow in water. Strange how fate had found us both on holiday in Karlstadt. He told me about his wife’s recent pregnancy, and perhaps found it too rude to ask why I was still carrying the thing around with me, or why I was still gripping it firmly as I handed it back to him with bitter reluctance.

Dan Pedley

It had been a very stressful year for the bank manager, yet this did not deter his wife from launching into a most unfestive tirade on Christmas evening after discovering him half-undressed in the bathroom with the poster from his new Mediaeval Baebes album spread out before him. “But dearest,” he implored, “as I’ve explained before – apart from their music, the only thing I admire about these young ladies is their business plan”.

The winter stars shone brightly above suburbia that Christmas night, and across the land Herne-like bankers frolicked with woodland nymphs in their secret bathroom worlds.

The Vote

It is up to you who wins the prize. Voting ends at midnight on the 27th. The winner will be announced on the 28th. Vote away. Vote, vote, vote…

It had been a very stressful year for the bank manager, yet this did not deter his wife from launching into a most unfestive tirade on Christmas evening after discovering him half-undressed in the bathroom with the poster from his new Mediaeval Baebes album spread out before him. “But dearest,” he implored, “as I’ve explained before – apart from their music, the only thing I admire about these young ladies is their business plan”.

The winter stars shone brightly above suburbia that Christmas night, and across the land Herne-like bankers frolicked with woodland nymphs in their secret bathroom worlds.

Dan Pedley.

I returned the tie-pin to Joseph six years after he’d discarded it in my room, where it skidded and bounced under our new bed like a minnow in water. Strange how fate had found us both on holiday in Karlstadt. He told me about his wife’s recent pregnancy, and perhaps found it too rude to ask why I was still carrying the thing around with me, or why I was still gripping it firmly as I handed it back to him with bitter reluctance.

Tinsel for arms, baubles for eyes, the overloaded lights brought the Christmas tree to life like some Frankenstein of spruce. It discovered enwrapped slippers at its base and used them as feet. It walked out of the house and back to the forest, a trail of non-drop needles in its wake.

Dave Hartley

It may have seemed okay to sing a jolly song about birth defects in the 1930s, but you’d have thought that in the twenty first century, a council or a bored civil servant somewhere would ban the tune on the grounds of rhinophyma discrimination. He’d tried to get used to it over the years, but it still rankled; no-one sang about ‘Santa, the ugly, fat guy,’ or ‘Frosty, the sinister snowman.’ Well they were all in for a shock this year, he’d been to the North Pole Nose Clinic for corrective surgery, and for the first time ever, Rudolph couldn’t wait for Christmas Eve.

Carys Bray

Stephen sat on the train, flicking through the sheet music of Harvest by Neil Young. He was finally going to do it. Stephen was going to be boring.

Benjamin Judge

When Piction died, she stayed in the town of his birth. The Mayor banned the writing of all fiction within the town’s boundaries. At night she would stare out of the window at the child who always cried there, and hope that one day soon she would be able to leave.

John Roache

Howard has never loved, though he has felt close to it. Each woman he meets reminds him of the distance he must face between belief and truth – an imperceptible distance. Yet he lives in hope of finding, fearing he will not find – knowing a distant antidote will never cure.

Jensen Wilder

The Christmas tree was adorned with shining tinsel, baubles that bulged like fatted calves, and lights that twinkled as if in a nursery rhyme; it was mutton dressed as lamb. The tree longed to feel the wind in its needles, the breeze in its fir cones and the earth in its roots. It was desperate to stand tall with its kind but the closest it could come was to feel the strip pine floorboard of a fallen brother under its stump.

Aaron Gowman

Dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs. Dogs, dogs, dogs. Dogs.

Kaley X

Snowflakes floated down from the sky slowly creating a white wonderland in the deserted street. Children ran outside from their warm houses, smiles on their faces, trying to catch the snowflakes with their tongue, their parents chased after them with scarves and gloves. The writer was in her room, watching the scene unfold from her window.

 Michaela Gratton

The ghost of Christmas past made Scrooge realise his wrongs. The Ghost of Christmas present made Scrooge realise how he had affected those around him. Then the ghost of Christmas future made Scrooge realise he had to change his ways.

Brett Hackett

He liked books so much that sometimes he took them to bed. He’d squeeze them in under the covers, wish them all goodnight. Then, he’d go and lie blanket-less on the bookshelf.

Katie Anderson

Tom was curious about the world. One day Tom went out and explored the world. When Tom returned, he was still curious about the world.

Emma Johnson