About
Ampersunder is written by a person pseudonymed Mabel. The stories and circumstances are entirely fictional, and the characters do not represent any real persons, alive or dead.
Mabel is studying English literature (amongst other things) but will probably never take a creative writing class. She is inspired by many writers, and one of the things she thinks about when she writes is Scarlett Thomas’s idea of the storyless story in her novel Our Tragic Universe:
The whole point of a storyless story, she said, is the subtle rejection of story within its own structure. In this sense, the storyless story is almost what we would recognize as metafiction, but more delicate. Rather than being similar to a snake swallowing its own tail (or tale) the storyless story is closer to a snake letting go of itself. … The storyless story has no moral centre. It is not something from which a reader should strive to learn something, but rather a puzzle or a paradox with no ‘answer’ or ‘solution,’ except for false ones. The reader is not encouraged to ‘get into’ the storyless story but to stay outside. … Characters in storyless stories, she said, didn’t worry about what they wore or said or did. They were Fools stepping over the edge of the cliff on all our behalves, so that we can also step out of the restrictive frame of contemporary Western narrative. Surely, she argued, we should have stories not to tell us how to live and turn our lives into copies of stories, but to prevent us from having to fictionalise ourselves.
This idea intrigues Mabel. There’s actually no such thing as a storyless story, and that’s what makes it interesting. It’s not so much about pretending that you can write a story without a plot or without action, but about being aware of and playing with the conventions of fiction and narrative structure. This approach works for Mabel because when she tries to write a story in a conventional, realistic, accessible way, she usually fails, so she likes the idea that there may be substance in her desire to write stories that feel incomplete.
Mabel also posts visual artwork by other people that inspire or are otherwise in some way connected to her writing.
To contact Mabel, email her at ampersunder@gmail.com.
