Have you ever actually thought about the order in which you put the words - and sense - in a sentence? In In Praise of the Long Sentence I was thinking about how long sentences flow forwards - provide profluence, aka narrative micro-drive - in a way which short sentences can't. But there's also a flexibility about the structure of a long sentence which means you can control the order in which the reader experiences its elements. Narrative takes place in time even more unavoidably than music does, since we don't even have the equivalent of chords, so it's as well to learn to make the most of it. I'm no philologist, but I suspect that English, being virtually uninflected and depending for much of its grammar on auxiliary elements, rather than endings to words, has great advantages when it comes to this. Not for us, for example, the necessity to put the verb at the end.

Thinking aloud, how about this: a not outrageously long sentence with four basic elements, putting forward a fairly simple scenario:

1) I walked into the room and saw that Jim had sat down in the purple armchair, the better to blow his tea cool and talk to Arabella, who had an expression of resigned amusement on her face.

2) Walking into the room I saw that Arabella, with an expression of resigned amusement on her face, was being talked to by Jim, who had sat down in the purple armchair the better to blow his tea cool.

3) Arabella had an expression of resigned amusement on her face, as I saw when I walked into the room, and was talking to Jim, who was blowing his tea cool as he sat in the purple armchair.

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The camp area was fenced on all sides, obliging us to listen to a convoluted explanation of the connection between capitalism and climate change from a well-spoken youth guarding the entry gate. He was sitting on a bale of hay.

Bringing down capitalism appealed to me much more than my ecologically-conscious friend D’s approach. Her latest claim to the moral high-ground includes knitting waistcoats for rescued battery hens. I’d much rather man the barricades.



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I'm not yet ready to blog about what it's like to have moved countries, that kind of thing, I am still musing, so I thought I'd bring some exciting news from Short Story World. First, Electric Literature, the new lit zine that is available in print, as an eBook, or for your Kindle of iPhone, and pays its contributors a wonderful $1000 per story (!) has taken an exciting step into the world of animation and asked animators to create a very short film based on one line from each of the pieces they published in Issue 1. Here, for example, is Jonathon Ashley's take on a sentence from Michael Cunningham's novel excerpt:........

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I made the mistake of clicking on my website in front of my son (aged 9). He howled with derision and called his sister (11) over.

"No, Dad, no! Colour clash! It's so amateurish! You should have got us to do it! That's terrible!" All this was accompanied by much laughter, and the occasional patronising "Aww" at a particularly inept bit of design on my part. It comes to something when you're patronised by your own kids.

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Bloody Trent waking me up with his telephone call earlier. Okay, so it had gone noon and I should have been up but did he really have to ring just to tell me he was flying in from L.A. on Wednesday? I already knew that and okay, we have been friends since we were kids but did he also have to do it just as he was about to get it on with yet another of his gullible fans? Listening to Trent's sex life was definately something I could live without and I certainly was not going for a night out clubbing with him. That just entailed drinking, sex, more drinking and more sex....for him that is, not me. I can't be bothered with all the hoo-ha surrounding him on his nights out. The club's treat him like royalty, almost pouring the drink down his throat and rounding up all worthy girls to surround him,while backstage they call all the papparazzi for those free publicity pictures of yet another actor leaving their establishment. Me, I prefer a much more quiet night.

I couldn't get to sleep after that and ended up watching Murder She Wrote on the TV before switching over to Jerry Springer. I should have ended our friendship just for having to endure that. Where do they find those people?

Now I am hungry and just waiting for the room service I ordered twenty minutes ago. Infact, after I've eaten I might phone Trent back. Lets see, he would have probably just gone to sleep......

was squeezing into a tight and extremely short sequin dress. Stunning as it was, movement was very limited and to protect my modesty the attractive stranger I had met gently pulled the rising material down only for it to expose my boobs. Who said chivalry was dead.

I was thinking about 9/11 today and was remembering when I first saw it happening. I had been working and the TV was on in the background, I think it was Murder She Wrote, when there was an interuption and a newscaster announced one of the towers had been hit by a plane. There was no reason for my thinking it was a deed of evil, I should have looked at it as a tragic accident but I felt wierd inside; and then the second plane came into view. I looked at my tiny baby lying asleep in her baby bouncer and I felt cold. I could not telephone my husband and father quick enough as if by telling people it would distract by body from the shock it felt. I will never forget that day.......

I was right. I didn't sleep a wink and I feel shattered. Even splashing a little water on my face, giving my teeth a brush and having a nice hot breakfast hadn't made me feel any better. The captain announced the chance of rain this afternoon with temperatures reaching around 46 so I guessed the jacket I brought wasn't going to suffice. Luckily my suitcase was already riding around on the carousel so I could grab it and get out through customs before the onslaught of economy invaded the area where my chauffeur was waiting for me and who I gratefully handed my bag. The car was comfortable and it seemed only a matter of minutes for my eyes to close but my quick nap was troubled by a recurring dream I had been having lately. It is so vivid. A young kid is sitting in the back of a car, his mother turns in the passenger seat to smile at him. It is such a warm feeling. She then places her hand on the gentleman next to her and he glances at her with a cheeky wink; there is so much love between them. Then suddenly the window screen is shattering around them, shards of the glass cutting through their skin, blood is everywhere.....and that is when I awake, every goddamn time.

Well I am now at the Marriott in London's Westminster, it's a comfortable suite but all I am interested in is the bed and a long and much needed sleep.

I had a drink earlier, well a drink turned into four but it didn't have the effect I wanted and sleep didn't come. I tried watching the TV but out of the 30 on demand films I couldn't find one to hold my attention. Why do I find it so hard to sleep on a plane? The bed is comfortable and quite spacious and it's dark and peaceful in here but my eyes never seem to close more that a couple of minutes. God I am going to be knackered tomorrow.

I'm a good girl.
No, really, I am.
I eat my five a day, I read bedtime stories to my children and I call my Mother every day.
I like to think my reward will be an afterlife like George Best, but in the meantime I make sure I floss my teeth.
So what then, is a nice girl doing writing crime fiction?
It's a question I'm asked all the time. In fact, when I was doing the publicity stint for my second book, I was asked a variant of it in every one of the fifteen radio interviews I did.
And I suppose it does seem odd that I should choose to spend so much time dreaming up violent criminals and their brutal activities.
Why don't I shy away from imagining what goes on in the mind of a sociopath?
Why do I enjoy exploring the twisted logic of the damaged and the dangerous?
It seems strange, sick even...but it's not.
Hang on and give me a chance.


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