Eclecticism magazine

Pilot issue

Photo and cover by Terry Freedman

Preamble

This is an experiment. I’ve written and collated several articles into one post. The alternatives would be one post a day for several days, or one of the articles each week for a few weeks. Which do you think you would prefer? Please leave a comment and, when you’ve read this, complete the poll.

Thank you so much.

Best wishes

Terry

Tommy Cooper

Tommy Cooper was a comedian/magician whose tricks almost always went wrong. He loved word play, and in this clip he uses what I believe is called a misplaced modifier. You can see the joke hurtling towards you like a ten ton truck, but it’s funny nonetheless!

Review: Dictator Literature

There are loads of prizes for writers, but maybe there should be one or two for readers as well. Kalder has trawled through the writings of dictators both great and small (some of whom I hadn't even heard of), and from what he says it is mostly unreadable. Surely he deserves some sort of award, if not a medal?

For some reason, dictators love to publish tracts with titles like "Speech given to the tractor workers on the opening of a new plant" (I made that one up, but I shouldn't be at all surprised if there really is a booklet with that name.)

For the most part, dictators write great theories that are either a massive word salad or make no sense whatsoever -- or both.

The copious excerpts will give you a good insight into the mind of the average psychopath who manages to attain a position of power.

Still, if you're a writer you will glean one useful idea from this, assuming you haven't thought of it already. When you've run out of things to write, transcribe, collate and publish your talks and podcasts. With a bit of luck, the sheer volume of your output will be enough to convince the world you're a serious writer, even if what you've written is unreadable.

Click this link to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)

Further experiments in style

This article is part of series I am writing called Experiments in Style. It is my version of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (Amazon affiliate link), in which the author takes a very mundane incident and reworks it in various ways. A graphic version of the same thing is Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to tell a story (ditto). I think it’s quite interesting to see how a change in style can dramatically alter the feel of a piece. My ‘experiments’ are based on the article I wrote called A bang on the head. Look at this index post for a link to the original article (Introducing the Experimenting with Styles Project) and other examples. To save you time, here’s the original article:

A bang on the head

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.

The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.

The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.

An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

A bang on the head in the style of a not-quite-accurate comic strip

Illustration by Terry Freedman

Gently boosting Vanessa

One of the joys of teaching is that feeling when you know you have made someone’s life better. Vanessa Smith (not her real name) came to the secondary school I was teaching in aged 12. She was the only pupil from her previous school. She was shy, obviously lonely, and under-confident. I was her form tutor, which meant that I took the register every morning and afternoon and was the go-to person for other teachers who had any issues with any of the pupils from my group. I also got to see all of their reports from different subject teachers. In other words, the role of the form tutor was a pastoral one, designed to ensure that someone knew the big picture for each pupil.

I asked Vanessa if she had any hobbies. She told me she liked to play the guitar, so I asked her if she would like to join Miss Jones’ guitar group after school club. She said “yes”, so I introduced her to Miss Jones, who took her in, so to speak.

My form was incredibly noisy – you could hear them shouting all the way down the corridor. They always stopped talking as soon as I walked into the classroom, but every so often I would ask Vanessa to stay behind so I could have a word with her.

“Vanessa, I know that you’re the ringleader of this lot, and it’s because of you that they’re so noisy when I’m not around. I can’t prove it, but one of these days you’ll slip up.”

Vanessa’s response was usually to roll her eyes and go to her lesson.

On one occasion the kids had to fill in a questionnaire asking how good they were at maths. Vanessa had come third in the entire Year group (180 kids). I saw that she had circled a 9 on the ten-point scale, 10 being the highest.

“That’s wrong”, I said. “You’re nearer a  two, because although you got 98% on your maths exam, everybody else got 99%.”

More eye-rolling.

At the end-of-term parents evening, a lady came to my desk while I was waiting for the next parent who’d made an appointment to see me.

Lady: Mr Freedman? I’m Vanessa’s mum.

Me: Oh, Mrs Smith! I’m so glad you’ve come to see me. I was hoping to have a chat with you.

Mrs Smith: I wanted to have a chat with you too. So what did you want to talk to me about?

Me: No, you first.

Mrs Smith: No, you first.

Me: Ok. I just wanted to say that I’m really pleased that Vanessa seems a lot more confident and happy now than when she first came to the school.

Mrs Smith: That’s what I wanted to talk to you about! It’s because of you.

Me: Me? But I don’t even teach her.

Mrs Smith: No, but she comes home every afternoon from school laughing about the daft things you’ve said to her!

Vanessa grew in confidence in the guitar club. It was delightful seeing her performing with the others at school functions.

I left the school two years later. My mother had a market stall, and wasn’t very well. I felt I could do with a short break from teaching, so I took over her shop for a while, Vanessa came through the market a year later. We had a brief chat, and I wished her luck in her exams. I’ve no doubt she did well. I haven’t seen her since, but I do hope she has done well for herself in life. I like to think that perhaps I played a small part in helping her on her way.

5 things I’ve learnt from 30 years of freelance writing

• Rejection is part of the deal. If you’re lucky enough to receive feedback on your pitch or submission, read it carefully and learn from it.

• Everyone is afraid to hit “Publish”. Just do it. If someone doesn’t like it, well they don’t have to read your stuff in future. If they complain, tell them to do it themselves – or, better still, ignore them.

• Protect your work. Make sure your name is in the Alt text and the caption of any illustration you use (assuming it’s yours, of course). On a couple of occasions I’ve caught people out who have tried to rip me off – including a large commercial magazine.

• Attend courses where you can not only learn from an experienced and qualified teacher, but also test drive your efforts in a supportive environment.

• Always keep copies/backups of your work.

Concluding remarks

I hope you’ve enjoyed this magazine-style post. Please leave a comment and take part in the poll at the top of this email.

Thanks!

Terry