Ex-Makar embarks on new literary challenge
Lochhead is to pen short stories
SHE is an honoured poet, a celebrated playwright, has been Scotland’s Makar and now Liz Lochhead is to tackle a new literary challenge – the art of short story writing.
Lochhead is attempting to write a short story every month in 2017 with the hope she can eventually publish a collection of stories.
One of her first new short stories, Night Before Christmas, is published in The Herald today.
Lochhead has long been an admirer of short story writers, especially Alice Munro, Lori Moore, Raymond Carver, Helen Simpson and James Kelman, among others.
Now Lochhead, 69, best known for her poetry and plays and for holding the position of Makar between 2011 and 2016, is to tackle the short form.
“Short stories have long been my favourite reading, and my favourite living writer has long been Alice Munro,” she said.
“She is amazing, and I love Lori Moore’s short stories, Raymond Carver, Helen Simpson is one of the best in Britain, but I have never written any myself.
“I have had ideas, but I have always been working on a play that’s behind, and at the moment, I have no paid work on my slate.”
She said poetry writing has always seemed “more urgent” and added: “Writing a short story is like a poem but it is very difficult to write a short story.
“This one, Night Before Christmas, is just a simple short story. I have invented characters that are nothing like the friend [who inspired it].
Lochhead, whose husband Tom Logan died in 2010, said she finds Christmas to be a difficult time emotionally.
“Like a lot of people every year, I find it difficult – people do,” she said.
“A lot of the observations in the story are mine on Christmas supermarkets, say, or Christmas cards, they are about my memories.”
Lochhead said she took about two days to write the first draft, and she wanted the story to be as “apparently plain” as the works of Raymond Carver, the revered American writer, known for his deceptively simple “genius” she said.
“I had written a couple of short stories in the past, but they have always been dramatic monologues, so it is about the voice.
“And some of those are fragments of plays. I have said to Helen Simpson, my friend, I have always wanted to write a thirdperson short story, but not one with an omniscient narrator.”
She added: “I just wanted to write a story about an ordinary person, getting through his first Christmas after he has been widowed.” style and
Lochhead said she was grateful to have been The Makar, a position now held by Jackie Kay, especially as she was offered the position, not long after the death of her husband, whose loss is still keenly felt.
“I felt as Makar, anything that was asked of me, I felt I should do it, because that was the position,” she said.
“I am glad to be not the Makar any more, so I am not feeling obliged, but it was wonderful for meatthetime.
“It saved my life, I worked like a maniac, I did so much work.”