TaniaWrites

A new website launched today, and I know some of those involved so I thought I would give The Faster Times a plug here.

The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields.

The website seems to be a sort of Huffington Post-ish let's-write-about-everything type of site, covering World, Politics, Business, Science, Food, Arts, Books, Parents, Sports, Travel and Advice on their top menu bar above the logo... and Health, Tech, Nonsense, Love and Death, Design, Insider and Surprise Me on the menu bar just under the logo.

Intrigued as I am by "Nonsense"(!), I am obviously most interested in the "seven writers on books alone" part! So I wander to the Books page, and here I find that one of the main sections is Indie Books. And here is an article by the Indie Books editor, Rozalia Jovanovic, on why she loves small presses:

When I began to articulate why I am endeared to small presses, the output of which I’ll be concerned with in this column, I was hard-pressed to find a hole-less rationale. But I am clear that the work that most challenges me as a reader, the writing which I find most satisfying, is often enough the product of a Dalkey Archive, Serpent’s Tail or Verse Press. This has something to do with my empathy for the sound assertion of individuality.

She goes on to say that she is "wary of group rhapsody. Whether religious, political, or social, the self-effacement required of collective euphorias makes me cagey....Indie publishers have long been known for their struggles against group rhapsody. ..." Read the rest of her article here.

This, alongside links to articles with titles like "Talented Writers Dropped by Large Publishers are a Boon for Small Presses", and, on the main Books page, a link to Kevin Brockmeir's 50 Favourite Short Stories ( The Twenty-seventh Man" by Nathan Englander is the only story I've read) makes me think I am going to be reading the Faster Times fairly often.

Ah hang on... I just found that they have a Science+Art section! Ok, now I'm hooked: The Return of the Odor Artist ("The life of an odor artist is, more often than not, an unfulfilled one. "), a link to New Scientist article An Astronaut Confronts Gustav Holst's 'The Planets'. Mmm. Lots and lots of reading to do. How will I find time to write?

Good luck, Faster Times, in these days of swiftly-changing loyalties, I hope you thrive.

Addendum: Just seen that they have linked to The Short Review's "wonderful" interview with Matt Bell from their Publishing page. How lovely!

I am back at work in my cool cellar/study, just the right temperature when it's 27 degrees outside. Since the lovely news about the Binnacle Ultra-Short comp, I have done a u-turn on my previous decision to stop writing flash fiction. The universe seems to be telling me that I'm pretty good at it, and I do love writing flash, so I'm going to keep on doing it.

I started today by writing a 25-word piece for Hint Fiction, a new anthology forthcoming from W.W Norton. If you link to the Hint Fiction page from your blog, they allow you to submit three pieces instead of two. Details:

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work.

It’s possible to write a complete story in 25 words or less — a beginning, middle, end — but that’s not Hint Fiction.

The very best Hint Fiction stories can be read many different ways.

We want stories we can read again and again and never tire of. Stories that don’t pull any punches. Stories that make us think, that evoke some kind of emotional response.

I heartily agree that "a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer"! I've written one, will try and write some more. Have a go. Read the full guidelines here.

Now for the not so nice part. A few weeks ago I was the victim of a plagiarist, who took all of the aspects of one of my published stories that made it my unique creation, added a few things of his own, passed it of as his, and not only was it published but it won a prize. I know this person, he had been a trusted writing colleague. The person in question did not admit any wrongdoing, but the competition removed his "story" from their site. He has done this before and since, to others I know and perhaps more that we are not aware of.

It was, to say the least, a deeply distressing experienceI felt physically ill, couldn't write for quite a long time afterwards.

Several of us involved in this incident decided to do something. It isn't possible to safeguard your work from predators like this, unless you simply decide never to submit a story again. Once your work is out there, there is not much to be done. But... it is most certainly worth discussing what plagiarism in fiction means, and how we can make sure that we are not crossing the line between being "inspired by" - which to me is an essential aspect to creative writing - and theft.

To that end, Jane Smith on the wonderful How Publishing Really Works blog is having an Anti-Plaguarism Day on Friday July 15th. She says:

On that day I’m going to blog about plagiarism, and I’d like you to do the same: on your own blogs, on message boards, on Facebook or Twitter: anywhere where writers congregate. If you don’t have a blog of your own but would like to get involved then email your piece to “hprw at tesco dot net”, with a subject line of “HPRW anti-plagiarism day”, and I’ll post it here. Send me links to your blog posts or message board discussions and I’ll edit them into my piece.

You can write about anything you like, so long as it’s based on plagiarism: what it is, what’s allowed and what’s not, famous cases of plagiarism, how it feels to be plagiarised, and what effects plagiarism can have (on both of the writers involved): anything which is plagiarism-related, honest, well-researched and properly informed.

Read her full post here. Let's inform ourselves so that if anything like this happens to anyone, we can spot it, stop it, be aware. I hope no-one ever has to go through this.

Back to more positive things! I am off to write more Hint Fiction.

OK, so you know how it is when you submit something to a short story competition, and you wait and wait for the date they said they'd announce the winners, and then on that day they kindly let you know that you have to wait another month because they had so many entries, so you wait another month and then they send an email saying they had almost 1000 entries and they would be letting the honorees know within the next 24 hours and you think, 1000, blimey, no way I've made the last 50 and you cross it off your very organised Submissions spreadsheet thingy .......

......and then.

.......then you get an email from the competition organisers. They tell you.

That's you've won. The Grand Prize. The Grand Prize in the Binnacle Sixth Ultra Short Story Competition.

Then you faint (almost). And your heart starts pounding. And you keep thinking, Oh come on, that's just silly.

And then you wait some more. And finally, finally, today, three weeks' later, they put up the results! So it is real. Grinning. Much grinning.

I am in the most wonderful company: my great friend Vanessa Gebbie is the Editor's Choice in Prose, and there are my other wonderful writer friends in the honorees list: Vicky Grut, Ruth Almon, Oonah V Joslin, Nora Nadjarian, Nik Perring and Anne Brooke. Congratulations to all! Much grinning all round.

Salt's Just One Book campaign (see Twitter) to boost its sales so that my wonderful publisher can survive did definitely help! But there's more to be done. This is the latest from Chris Hamilton Emery:

Trade Summary

June's UK trade figures are in from our distributor, Gardners — 47% of our UK trade sales are now with the Waterstone's chain, 21% with Amazon. We had no sales at all in June from Borders. Trade sales for the first six months of this year are still down 4% on 2008, but we are beginning to close that gap. Total trade figures for June were up 21% on the previous June (the summer months are often exceptionally tough for Salt), growth was largely driven through the JustOneBook campaign. But conditions remain extremely difficult in the trade. 8% of turnover was library sales. Independent book shop sales accounted for less than 7% of trade turnover, very disappointing after a big sales push with the indies and three separate promotions.

The Challenge

Our challenge is to grow our trade sales over the coming months to keep the business on track. We need to find better ways at reaching the indies as we're still convinced that they are good partners for Salt's list. Despite the success of the JustOneBook campaign, this month's trade sales will be critical. We could easily eat into the revenues we've raised from sales made direct to our fans. One bad month in the trade can wipe out our campaign.

So.... this is the important bit. Listen closely:

How You Can Help Us

We need to keep Salt in the public eye. Here's how you can help. If you've bought a book from Salt and you enjoyed it please continue to support us by doing two important things (they're both free):

1. Firstly, tell your friends about the Salt title you enjoyed. Recommend it to them. Tell your friends on Twitter what you thought about it. Blog about it, if you like. Pass it on in anyway you can. Spread the word.

2. Secondly, please post a brief review of the book on Amazon to help the author. Amazon reviews do work.

Thank you for all your support. It really does matter.

Very best from me and Jen
Chris

Ok, you know what you need to do. I'm not talking about my book, please recommend and write reviews of any Salt book you've enjoyed, be it short stories or poetry. To get you started here's the link to a search for Salt Publishing on Amazon UK. This doesn't work on Amazon US (lots of books on saltwater fishing!) so here are a few choice links to start you off there:

Vanessa Gebbie's Words from a Glass Bubble. (Read The Short Review's review)

Elizabeth Baines' Balancing on the Edge of the World (Read The Short Review's review)

Charles Lambert's Scent of Cinnamon (Read The Short Review's review)

Carys Davies' Some New Ambush (Read The Short Review's review)

Alex Keegan's Ballistics (Read The Short Review's review)

The White Road and Other Stories I think I may have already mentioned!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support!

First, apologies for my silence, it's been several weeks of no Internet or - gulp - dial-up, and not much time while we travelled to sit down and focus on writing a blog post. I had also hoped to be able to announce that nice news I keep blathering on about, but.... nothing yet!

I had a very promising second meeting with an agent yesterday, the upshot of which is that I need to keep writing but she likes what I've done so far. Good news, more work ahead. And we've found a lovely place to live in Bristol, which will be our new home from end August, with the ideal studio workroom for me already set up and separate. Even better than a shed - if I am allowed to say that!

Also:

The July Issue of the Short Review is out. First, congratulations to the six short story collections shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. See the Short Review blog for the shortlist.


With this month's issue, we bring you the most authors we have ever reviewed - with anthologies containing stories from up to 50 authors outnumbering single-author collections. There is a plethora of criminal behaviour, nostalgia for the era of punk, tales of those in waiting, a little erotica and more. Interviews with Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose collection we reviewed in last month's issue, Mary Akers, Jason Allan Cole, Mark Illis and Alex Keegan. Find something to read.

Also on the blog: Ailsa Cox takes us behind the scenes of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, whose winner will be announced on July 4th. Read more.

Happy weekend of short stories! More from me when we get back home on Sunday.

I have just written 600 words, and it's 11.27 am. For me, that's huge! A good day. And I am thinking about ritual, because on my last day here at Anam Cara I realised that I sort of set up a ritual: breakfast, walk down to the river, sit for a while thinking about what I might write, or thinking about something else and waiting for it to come, it arriving, and going back to my room to write it - and writing it while also playing at least one game of online Scrabble (Wordscraper on Facebook) which helps me not get stuck. (I did this except the day it rained so heavily I couldn't see the garden at all.)

Sounds easy, no? It made me realise that I haven't had a ritual until now. Since we are moving countries in August and I don't know where we will be living, can I come up with one that isn't place-specific? What are your rituals? I'd love to hear what other people do.

And rules, do you have any? Apparently, Rick Moody has 14 of them, as he detailed in a recent interview in Night Train:

1. Omit Needless Words
2. Sacrifice Your Modifiers
3. Consider the Rhythm
4. Replace "To Be" and "To Have"
5. Simplify Tenses
6. Avoid Alliteration
7. Rethink Abstraction
8. Spill Your Parentheses
9. Use Figurative Language Sparingly
10. Engage All Five Senses
11. Cut the Last Sentence*
12. Read the Passage Aloud
13. Put the Draft Away
14. Do The Above Fifteen to Thirty Times

I don't quite understand number 4 - does it mean you can't say "I used to be..." or "I used to have.."? Or that you can't say "I am going..." or "I have done so much"...? Not sure what number 8 means either! read the full and great interview here.

Rituals? Rules? Tell us!