Larkin’s Blog

The time has flown and I am now over 5 weeks into the MSc in Creative Writing course at University of Edinburgh. So far, so good. I’ve decided to ditch all distractions, including an Open University course on 20th-century literature I began for some mad reason, and a part-time job that consumed my entire Friday and had me fretting for the entire week. I decided that this is the year I put writing front and centre, when I actually get a substantial body of work (including a novel) completed, and hone my craft. One thing’s for sure: I have been writing a lot more. And submitting - though no success yet.

So far I have completed or rewritten a couple of horror stories and am almost finished another. I have also been playing around with a noir detective novel based in Cork, and I think I might just continue with it once I get the plot fully laid out. The feedback from workshops has been very good and will definitely help me improve - in terms of the material I workshop, but also as a writer (and a critical one at that) in general.

I’ve also cleared the decks for some reading. First up is Dashiell Hammett, a renowned master of crime fiction. After all, Sam Spade is one of the archetypal characters in modern literature, and has even lent his name to a female detective on the show “Without a Trace”, played by an actor with the equally literary name of Poppy Montgomery. Maybe I could have a PI called Popeye Montgomery.

The Maltese Falcon is a given. Also will read Red Harvest and a collection of short stories called Nightmare Town. I’ve also got Agatha Christie’s first two novels in eBook format and it will be interesting to compare the two given that they are contemporaries of each other. Then I’ll move onto Philip Marlowe and some more recent writers like Pelecanos and others.

I seem to have fallen into a pattern of some kind. I write horror short stories and detective novels (at least, I have started them). I wonder why this is. I think it is probably because short horror stories can be very satisfactory, almost like tales from around the camp fire, or parables where a past crime is turned horribly against a protagonist. Crime / Mystery / Detective fiction, I find, lends itself better to more complex plots and necessitate a longer form. However, I may learn otherwise from Nightmare Town where one of the crime stories is 10 pages.

Anyway, I have a horror short story to finish that mixes the legends of Vampires and the Sirens and is set in an abandoned artillery fort at the mouth of Cork Harbour. I like what I have written so far…

It was certainly a big decision to make: to give up a well-paid full-time IT Consultant position. But that is what I will be doing this coming September as I start the MSc in Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh.

In the end it was not a difficult decision to bring my career in IT to an end (not that I rule out doing a bit in the future to make ends meet). I take my writing seriously and I would like to do it justice. For too long I was working that 40 hour week, studying 2 courses part-time, and doing part-time tutoring on the side. I was never going to have sufficient energy to devote to my writing.

Choosing Edinburgh was not difficult. I have never been there, but the city has a great reputation for art and culture, eating and drinking, and more. And the University of Edinburgh is world-renowned, achieving position 23 in the Times Top 200 World Universities ranking. That’s 26 positions higher than Trinity College, Dublin, the highest Irish-ranked university. The course, with its focus on the fiction genre and a bit of relevant literature studies thrown in is ideal. Also, the option to progress directly to their PhD in Creative Writing is enticing.

And the competition? I applied to many universities throughout the UK and have received several offers (Swansea, Portsmouth, Lincoln, Roehampton), with others requesting interviews and others still reviewing my application (including my writing portfolio, which appears to have stood up well). However, I did not need to hear back from anyone else as my decision is made.

And there it is: as of September 2009 I will consider myself a full-time writer. It will be up to myself to write and write and submit for publication… and to promote myself wherever I can to raise a profile.

To make up for a recent dearth of daily haikus, here are 4 that I wrote in quick succession…

All of a sudden,
Hurtling from the deep jungle
Was a silverback.

Without any thought,
I wrote that lovely haiku
To amuse myself.

The glare on my screen
Makes it very hard to read
What I am writing.

Less than five minutes
To write four random haikus
Isn’t bad at all.

Confused state of mind
Makes it hard to write this verse;
This will have to do.

The sure-footed sheep stand steadfast against
The elements that test them, torment them,
And plunder their will; yet they stand so still
With weather-woollen coats that protect them.

Many-cooked fats and oils
Stink the air, catch in my throat,
Make it hard to breathe.

Fans whir without cease,
Heats the room to boiling point,
But it helps me write!

Lawnmower mumbles,
Grass shaven, weeds beheaded,
Trimmings composted.

Chocolate muffins:
Cocoa, flour, eggs, milk, and
Vanilla essence.

Bottlenose Dolphin
Couples with False Killer Whale
To create Wolphin