Hatpin
27 August 2007
Greg picked up mail this morning from the Sepulchre mail server and found two messages about the first Sepulchre short story competition:
1. The first message was a question. Is there a prize for the winner? The answer is: 'Yes, there is – a free residential weekend ticket for the second Chichester Writing Festival!'
2. The second message was an entry to the competition. Quick work!
If you’ve looked at the competition page, you’ll know that the story we’ve asked you to write has to include a hatpin. The theme was inspired by a visit to a museum in Mirepoix in southwest France where there was an impressive display of 19th century household artefacts, closely related to the period and class of the characters in Sepulchre.
Interestingly, I think, I’ve used something like a hatpin before, in Labyrinth, then cut it out. About halfway through, I had a scene between a wife and her older husband. I saw her raising her hands above her head, drawing out the sharp steel stiletto concealed in her hair. Then she wound her two hands about her husband’s neck and drove the hatpin in under the base of his skull.
It would have been a good set piece but, in the final cut, it didn’t fit. I’m not quite sure why. It might be because it was just too gruesome at that point – it could have seemed like overkill.
All this has made me think of the ways in which certain images, ideas of similar sorts of scenes, climax points, occur and recur in different books.
Both Greg and I performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival last week. We did a couple of creative writing events - with CW graduates and professional writers in the audience - that went really well. Then, most nerve-wracking, I did my first ever pre-publication Sepulchre presentation to an audience of over 400 people.
It crossed my mind to mention the hatpin murder – as I think of it – but, again, it didn’t quite fit. I never got the chance.
Ah well, next time …
Second chances are permitted in the Sepulchre.
