Elizabeth Rutherford-Johnson

Revolution night at the Speakeasy

petrichor — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:50:34 +0000

The lovely people at Insignificant Theatre have selected my monologue Truth Wizard for their next run of Speakeasy nights. These are a lot of fun – some highly talented actors perform the pieces, delivering short, sharp fixes of new writing. If you’re in London on October 3, 4 or 5 and fancy something different than come along…

Happy birthday, Short Review!

petrichor — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:59:03 +0000

My review of Jay Merill’s God of the Pigeons is now up on The Short Review, which has just turned three. Happy birthday, Short Review – so much better read than most kids your age!

The Numbers Game

petrichor — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:45:03 +0000

Number of days since last post: thirty-three

Number of ideas for new posts: four and a half

Number of actual posts written: one

Number of resolutions to sort out website/front page/all that jazz: one hundred plus

Number of novels/plays polished and rewritten and polished and rewritten and ready to sub: two

Number of novels/plays subbed: zero

Number of new novels/plays started: one

Number of guilty feelings about not doing enough work on blog/novel/play: eighteen gazillion

Number of artsy/lit events attended: five

Number of frivolous things bought to cheer self up: three. Ish. Is lipstick frivolous or necessary?

: Yes I am shallow. What of it?

Number of 7am Caffe Nero writing starts: thirteen

Number of books I have been sent to review: four

Number of reviews I have written: one

Number of bedtime stories read: fifty plus

Perfect bedtime reading for a two-year old

Number of attempts to sort the spacing on this post: sixteen plus

Any numbers you’d like to share?

So, how’s that whole blogging resolution going then?

petrichor — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 20:31:17 +0000

Not great so far. I’m putting it down to being inbetween projects. Finished Novel is finally actually finished, or as finished as I can make it after writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. After some flattering and helpful feedback from an initial send out to agents last year (but no deal – zut alors) the rewritten, polished, better than ever version is back out before a few new select agents. Cross your fingers for me.

Radio play. In August went on an Arvon Course dedicated to radio drama that is best described as ‘like joining a cult – in a good way’. Great people, great tutors – Polly Thomas and Christopher William Hill – workshops, tutes, technical expertise and the space to just write and be. Ahhhh. Came home in a frenzy and got out first draft of apply in a couple of weeks. In my part-time life this counts as an achievement. Now am at that interesting stage of having hit a wall – I know there is a lot wrong with it, some scenes sing, others sound flat, but I’m not capable of doing anything more constructive than tinkering with lines (itself not a useless thing to do). It feels now as if this structure is the only structure possible. The only one that might work for these stories, these characters. That if I was to remove one thing form this, the whole edifice would tumble and that would be that. And I do not dare. Because I have a play. And I’ve never had one of those before. And I love the feeling and, emerging from two years of novel rewrites with still no guarantees, I so so so want a piece of writing of mine to work right now.

Luckily I am friends with/married to/related to some clever, sensitive and above all showy-off type people. Who think that coming round to read a script from cold, drink too much wine and tell me exactly what is wrong with it, at length, is an excellent way to spend a Sunday evening. Guys, I salute you.

And then there is Next Novel. NN has been knocking about for, ooooh, years. NN is, as they say, thoroughly composted. There is a very nice agent lady who liked FN (but not enough to rep it – bah) but is interested in NN, and now sends me polite emails wondering how things are going with NN. I should probably do something about NN. But – ha ha – rather than plunge blindly in, I am determind to plan NN properly and thus avoid duplicating any, most, all of the same mistakes I made with FN. I am also terrified beyond words of NN and novels in general. Definitely time to do something about it.

Long time, no…

petrichor — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:05:08 +0000

So, I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for the longest time. Looking at other people’s blogs (I’m a terrible lurker), seeing what works, what’s pretty – compiling lists of all the things my perfect blog should have. And not doing a thing about it.

And then T – an old-blogging hand, name-dropped in The New Yorker, no less – pointed out that I had this place. Abandoned and unloved as it is. And maybe, just maybe I should try out some actual posting, before I got too involved with building the perfect blog. Just start doing, he said in a suspiciously hippyish manner – I blame the kung fu.

So here I am. Just doing, for a change. At the very least this gets “post something on the damn website” off my to do list, and that’s worth the ticket price alone.

Deadlines

petrichor — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:09:30 +0000

My review of Carol Manley’s brilliant Church Booty is now up at The Short Review.

And a month after subbing to 10 agents, I have five responses: two form rejections and three requests to read the full MS once it’s finished. Obviously this may not lead anywhere, all three agents may say thank but no thanks. But it is the best boost I could have hoped for. I made it through three slush piles. Three people who don’t know me and owe me nothing more than a polite brush-off would like to read more.

So now the clock is ticking. I’ve promised a complete MS by August. No excuses. Eight and a half chapters of the rewrite. Half of a third draft. A final swift sweep through to pick up the rest. I am giddy with words. Double vision. I have second, third and fourth drafts crawling through my head every time I close my eyes. It’s a high and a sickness. The game is afoot.

Big wide world

petrichor — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:42:50 +0000

Today I spent far too much on stationery and far too long queuing at the post office in order to send the first three chapters (or 10 pages or 30 pages or 7,500 words) of the novel off to agents. Strange exhilaration of actually doing something, of getting myself out there after so long writing in the dark. That’s what I miss about writing short stories – not just the joy of working with something you can slice and dice without feeling you’ve just knocked through a supporting wall – but also the regular subbing. I was never amazingly prolific, but I usually had half a dozen things out there at a time, and I did love that feeling of my words being out there, maybe even being read right now; anything could happen in the next half hour.

So that’s where we are again. Anything could happen in the next half hour. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous – what’s worse; failure or success? Should I wait til I’m right at the end of the rewrite before subbing? Until I’ve revised the rewrite? Maybe with another rewrite for good luck? Thing is, I could spend a lifetime on this book. After five years it still fascinates me; my timelines stretch back to grandparents at the moment, but what happened before them, before that?… And maybe that wouldn’t be a bad way to spend a life, but I have other books waiting to get out; I think this novel is good enough, that it has legs. But what if it doesn’t? Feels like it’s time to find out.

Political animal – apparently

petrichor — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:57:01 +0000

Last week I was at the Writers’ Inc awards evening at the Barbican Centre. It was a warm but poignant affair. Writing is such a solitary sentence that it is always good to find a sense of camaraderie for others in the same boat; how sad, then, that 15 years of giving a voice to new and emerging writers, Writers Inc has lost its Arts Council funding and is having to close. This was its wake. There were some great readings from several poets associated with the organisation, as well as the winners of the latest competition. My story “Talking to Strangers in Bars” had made the short list and Mario Petrucci was generous enough to give a mention of each of the short-listed stories and a few lines to say what he and the other judges found special about each of them. He described “Talking to Strangers” as being unashamedly political – a great compliment and possibly the last word I’d have used to describe that story.
At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this; I felt both flattered and indignant. Was it political simply because of the Cold War setting? The main character’s Polish background? What else made it political – it’s hardly the West Wing or even Westminster after all. I talked to Mario afterwards to thank him and mentioned that I had never thought of this story as political. Oh, but it is, he assured me, deeply so: in the original sense of the word – polis, of the people.
I left feeling giddily happy and also oddly vulnerable. For someone else to see these things in something I have written is strange indeed.

Anyway, a great evening. I have already tweaked “Talking to Strangers” and sent it out again. Not subbing much at the moment but maybe this one will pick up interest somewhere. It’s a particular favourite of mine, one of the first times I ever got brave enough to write directly about families and the lives into which we’re all born. It also shares a lot of the same preoccupations with The Novel: the Polish element, notions of scrutiny and observation, betrayal and the possibility of redemption.

The Novel rewrite is also going surprisingly well and finally seems to have picked up a bit of much-needed momentum – amazing how much writing you can fit into a 45 minute nap when you have to. Have also been working on a short summary. Seeing as I still can’t answer the simple question “so what’s your book about”, this has been, ahem, challenging and also strangely satisfying; at under 200 words it feels more like a poem than a pitch. Who knows, at this rate I might be ready to send the beast out one day. One day’s beginning to look a lot more realistic than it used to…

Other worlds

petrichor — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:27 +0000

The new edition of The Short Review is out today, with a review by me of “God Lives in St Petersberg” – cracking read – along with an interview with the author Tom Bissell. Marvellous stuff.

Long overdue catch-up

petrichor — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:43:16 +0000

Not that I’m the most regular of posters but this is bad even by my standards. The reason for the long silence is six weeks old today and currently comatose on my knee with one sock off and one sock on. Still adjusting to motherhood but as well as being besotted with my beautiful daughter I can report that it has plenty to offer the writer. There’s nothing like the fragile sleep of an infant to spur the lacksadaisacal scribbler to get down and sort that chapter NOW – because if you miss this window and she wakes up then that could be your chance gone until who knows when… It makes you hungry for it, which I think is good. And the act of writing becomes more precious also: I am someone’s mother and I love that – but this means I have not given up on being me.

Anyway, motherhood aside, I have reached and bid farewell to the halfway mark in the rewrite of The Beast, which seemed to take forever and which feels very good indeed.

I’ve had another review published on Tania Hershman’s The Short Review. And my short Talking to Strangers in Bars made the shortlist for Writers Inc’s annual competition: no prizes but I do get to go to the awards evening at the Barbican in October, which looks a lot of fun.