Writing and Mental Health

I've never been asked questions about writing and mental health & well-being before - here is an excerpt from my responses to questions by the Ignis Poetry Collective, a new organisation aiming to "explore and improve mental health via poetry and writing"

Do you think there has there been a direct impact upon your mental health/well-being as a result of leaving behind science journalism in favour of fiction and poetry? 

Yes – I was much calmer when I was a science journalist! I had some sort of structure, I had deadlines, I was being paid for each article, and more than that I was leaving the house to meet fascinating people, learning about new technologies and breakthroughs, it was very stimulating, I loved that job. But writing fiction was my dream from childhood, and at a certain point there was no more ignoring that. When I started writing short stories, I also started experiencing great mood swings and anxiety, because I was delving inside myself, spending more time alone – and obviously no-one was waiting for me to produce anything, and the chances of getting paid for it were fairly slim.

You can read the full interview here: https://ignispoetrycollective.wordpress.com/blog/ 





 

Suffragette-themed writing workshop - coming to a location near you?

I ran a suffragette-themed flash fiction workshop for the fabulous Word Factory yesterday in the gorgeous Tara Theatre, culminating in a performance that night of the brand-new work the participants produced. I've never done anything quite like that before - and was very moved by the pieces produced by the 18 writers, which dealt with the present and the future as well as the past. I did a huge amount of research, and would love to run this workshop again - please do get in touch with me if you think you'd like me to run one near you! We can discuss fees & logistics, I am happy to customise it for different groups and different needs!

If you're looking for a seasonal gift for the writer - or would-be writer - in your life, you might like a copy of Writing Short Stories: A Writers and Artists Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014), which I co-authored with the excellent Courttia Newland, and which includes short pieces from a number of fantastic short story writers in the middle, ideas for how to get your writing going and lists of our favourite short stories for more inspiration! You can get a signed copy from me here if you'd like (please do let me know in the message to the seller who to sign it to), with free postage in the UK. I am happy to post abroad too!

Writing Short Stories eBook

Just to let you know that as of April 23rd, Writing Short Stories: a Writers And Artists' Companion - co-authored by me and Courttia Newland -  is available as an eBook! ePUB version here, Kindle version here. So now you can take it with you everywhere ;-)

Literature for Social Change

I wanted to direct your attention towards a blog post by my wise and talented friend Sue Guiney. It's a reprint of her article in the recent issue of "The Author", the magazine of the UK's Society of Authors, and its subject is literature for social change. What Sue wrote really made me think, and her topic is an important one, especially in this strange time here in the UK where the new school leaving exam seems to be dropping Arts subjects. Here's a taster of what happened after Sue's 2nd novel, A Clash of Innocents, set in Cambodia, was published:

I am a writer. I write stories about people I make up. So that should have been the end of it, right? Wrong, because the best part of the story was yet to come.

Many of us are lucky enough to go off and be inspired. Some of us can then create something out of that inspiration. But I realised I was one of the happy few who could bring the fruit of that inspiration back to the people who inspired me in the first place. And so I connected with a shelter in Siem Reap called Anjali House, which provides support for street kids and their families, and through them I founded a writing workshop for their teenagers. There I teach them to write poetry and stories in English, we publish a literary magazine, and then we hold a party where the kids stand up in front of a room of supporters and read from their work. I am now committed to running this programme three times a year, once on-site in Siem Reap, the other times via the internet.

When I came back to London from Cambodia after first setting up the workshop, everyone congratulated me. ‘What an incredible thing you’ve done!’ they all said. ‘How did you ever think of it?’ Everyone was amazed. But I was amazed by their reaction. I didn’t do anything special. I didn’t believe there was anything unusual about me that led to this attempt at social change.

... Read the rest of Sue's article here, and leave your thoughts on writing and social activism, it's something really worth discussing.

Are Scientists Human?

Intrigued by the title of the blog post? Good. This is a workshop I'm running on Friday morning as part of the Bright Ideas fellowship I was awarded here at the Genomics Forum which has brought me to Edinburgh for 2 (snowy) weeks. I'm having a wonderful time! Friday is my last day, and this is what I'll be up to. Come along!

Are Scientists Human?

Creative writing workshop to explore the “human face” of science. Are scientists human? If you rely on television and films to answer this question (e.g. The Big Bang Theory, Fringe, The Fly, Jurassic Park...) you might think the answer is "No". You may believe that all scientists are white-coated madmen (mostly men, yes) who don't experience normal human emotions, and aren't much in touch with the real world. And that science is all about right and wrong, no mess, no failure, just clinical, cut and dried.

But if you set foot into a real lab - as has Tania Hershman, writer-in-residence at Bristol University's Science Faculty, and Genomics Forum Bright Ideas Fellow - science may seem to be a completely different world, with its own language (actually, many, many languages, depending on the specific field) and strange tools and practices. But apart from that, the people doing the science on a daily basis are (mostly) just like the rest of us.

Anyone interested in exploring the human face of science can join Tania in a creative workshop, where she will share and discuss some of the very short stories written as fruits of her residency, and, through writing exercises, illustrate different ways to take inspiration from science and scientists for fiction - whether it be from lab life, from wonderful scientific words like "lamellipodia" or from scientific concepts.

The workshop will take place at 11:30am, Friday 13 April 2012, at the Genomics Forum, St John’s Land, Edinburgh. No previous experience is necessary, and places can be booked via the event’s page on the Eventbrite website.

 

The Juno Charm visits the blog

Photo: Emilia Krysztofiak: 

I am very luck in that I have many multi-talented writer friends, one of whom is Nuala Ní Chonchúir - she writes short stories, novels, poetry. Nuala - who is the same age as I am - has published, umm, let's see, three short story collections (Nude, To the World of Men Welcome, The Wind Across the Grass), a novel (You) and now her fourth  poetry collection, The Juno Charm, (the others are Molly's Daughter, Tattoo Tatu, Portrait of the Artist with Red Car). Do I feel inadequate? Is this about me? No, it isn't. It's about Nuala. Here's her full bio:

Born in Dublin in 1970, Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in Galway county. Her début novel You (New Island, 2010) was called ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times and ‘a gem’ by The Irish Examiner. Her third short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009)) was shortlisted for the UK’s Edge Hill Prize. Her second short story collection To The World of Men, Welcome has just been re-issued by Arlen House in an expanded paperback edition. The Juno Charm, her third full poetry collection, was launched in November.

I am delighted to be hosting this stop on her blog tour for The Juno Charm, an exquisite, moving, lyrical, visceral - and often very funny - collection of poetry. Since I am a poetry novice attempting to write a few poems, I used this as a chance to pick my talented friend's brain, get some tips. I hope you'll find it interesting too - and it will whet your appetite for the book, which would make an ideal seasonal gift!

Tania: Welcome, Nuala!  Your poems are a wonderful combination of very physical and visceral and soaring flights of language. You use some words I have never heard of (English words!) but didn't want to look them up, I loved the not-knowing. How do you write your poems? Do you search for words that are new to you?


Nuala: I’m now very curious to know what those words were!! [Tania: here are some of them: "jiddering", "drupe", "anchoritic", "lanugo", "vernix", "ocellated"] My poems are written when something flashes into my mind’s eye because of something I have read/seen/heard. Lots of thing interest me but in order to make a poem, a thing has to really grab me and nag at me until I write about it. Like most writers, I love to add to my word-hoard. I use the thesaurus and dictionary daily, when I write, because it’s important to me to always use the right word. I hope that by being a careful writer – meaning one who cares about everything from words to grammar to the overall feel and look of a poem – that I will eventually write something of worth. So, yes, I am always alert to new words and often that new word by itself will spark a poem. ‘Peabiddy’ – Flannery O’Connor’s word for peachicks (baby peacocks) – was a new word to me and it became the apt title to the poem ‘Peabiddy’ which is about my daughter Juno’s birth and my hopes for her. Here’s the text of it:


Peabiddy


The flaps opened and out you popped,
biddy-in-the-box, one wing raised
in a super-heroine’s salute.

We put you there, cock and hen,
rattling feathers and shrieking softly
under canvas in a midland field.

You, our emerald peabiddy,
the actual fact of you musters pride
as we watch amazed at your evolution.

How you stomp on sturdy legs and
perfect your calls: the eee-ow of your tribe,
the vowels and consonants of ours.

Safe passage – we cannot fly with you –
but our nest will always be here and
we can guarantee a soft landing.

T: Just a gorgeous poem, thank you! Many of the poems here deal with extremely personal experiences – sex, miscarriage, birth – is this something you feel that poetry helps you express in a way you can't in other forms – fiction or non-fiction?


N: My poetry tends to be about my life (other than when it involves narratives of other people’s lives, like van Gogh, Kahlo etc.). So it centres a lot on life events like birth, death, illness etc. My fiction tends to me more made-up, that is, not drawn directly from my life, but it will always contain parts of me – my opinions and experiences. I have written about all the same things in fiction (pregnancy loss, sex etc.) but I have transposed those things onto people who are clearly not me. It can be nerve-wracking, in that sense, when a poetry collection comes out because now people know all about the real, raw me, rather than the disguised, fictional me :)


T:Your poems seem to be in conversation with each other, reading the book in one go is a wonderful, complete experience. Was this in any way planned??


N: It wasn’t planned in that the poems were written over a four year period and they reflect what was happening to me and obsessing me over those years and before that. So the writing just grows organically out of whatever is going on, in this case marriage breakdown, divorce, pregnancy loss, remarriage, new love, new baby. So if it’s a conversation, it’s one with myself, trying to make sense of all the ups and downs of the past few years. The planning came later, then, in the ordering of the book – which poem to put where. That’s always a daunting experience but satisfying when the book has a narrative flow. I also ended and began with poems on a high note, to lure the reader in!

T: One final question? What advice would you have for a beginner poet , especially one who writes in other forms (i.e. me!)?


N: Read lots of contemporary poetry - find out what people are writing about and how they are doing it. Go to poetry readings and listen to your peers. Some poets read wonderfully and can be an inspiration. Learn a little about form - you don't have to write in forms but it's good to know a little about them. Maybe get a copy of The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, edited by Eavan Boland and Mark Strand. Write about the things that possess and interest you, the things that are dear to your heart. You knit, Tania - I challenge you to write a knitting poem! Thanks so much for having me here today. Next week my virtual tour takes me to Mel Ulm’s The Reading Life blog in the Philippines.

****

Thank you so much, Nuala, for visiting the blog and for sharing something with us about your process and the writing of poetry, what it means to you. (I have the Mark Strand book so i am on the right track!) Nuala blogs at Women Rule Writer, where you can follow the previous and next stops on her tour. You can buy The Juno Charm here. Go on, you know you want to!

Writing Science Into Fiction

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED, SADLY. I HOPE IT WILL BE RESCHEDULED.

I'm still contemplating my month's retreat, not quite ready to write about everything yet, still settling down, but here's some interesting info in the meantime, an event after my own heart:

Imagination and interpretation: Writing science into fiction

Starts: 6pm on 20 July 2011
Finishes: 7.30pm on 20 July 2011
Venue: The Royal Society, London

Speakers: Pat Barker CBE, Philip Sington
Chair: Prof. Sally Shuttleworth

Join Pat Barker CBE and Philip Sington in a discussion about representing scientists and science in contemporary fiction. Both authors have imaginatively used the archives of early 20th century scientists as the basis for major works of fiction. They will reveal what attracted them to these historical sources in particular, and discuss the pleasures and pitfalls of interpreting modern science in fictional worlds.

The event is free and all are welcome to attend. No ticket or advance booking is required - doors will open at 5.30pm and seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Bye for a while

There's no time, there's never enough time - to tell you what an astonishingly good week I had last week tutoring my first Arvon course with Sarah Salway! To tell you how much I learned... how much fun we had. I'm off now to the Hawthornden Castle Writers Retreat in Scotland for 4 weeks, with very very very little Internet access (maybe the odd dribble of it) - taking no fiction with me to read at all, a "short story fast"  -  wish me luck! See you all back here at the end of June, happy writing!

Revising short stories discussion Part II

(This blog post is very long, so I thought I'd turn it into a PDF too. See it here - please come back and comment afterwards! PDF with Parts 1 &2 here)

This began here...and it's become such an interesting discussion, focussing mainly on revising short stories, that I have been mulling it over and reading more about how different writers "do it", a kind of informal survey. I've asked members of my writing group, and there are brilliant comments on the first blog post, and I've been reading Paris Review interviews. I think what results is that there is no one way to do this. Revising/ reworking/re-dreaming your story is as much art as science.

Here's a selection of views on the subject - it's a long blog post but incredibly useful, for me at least. I am going to try a selection because I haven't found the way for me yet. I'd love to hear more from any of you - what works, what doesn't, any other ideas!

Here's what various writer friends said, on this blog and elsewhere:

I think too much and usually want to incorporate everybody's comments and suggestions, and the process becomes too analytical instead of heartfelt. I actually end up becoming sick of the whole thing and losing whatever emotion or soul I initially had, going into it ... I myself find that my best work are always written in white heat and rarely need to be tinkered with after the first draft. White heat...writing in the zone...lucid dreaming...starting with a fresh page...seems all very "right brain" to me. Left brain = editor head, while right brain = creator head? (Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau)

There is a state that I have on occasion got into (not very often, I wish I could) in which the words just flow: I come up with a sentence and it just leads to another and another and I look at the words on the page and think, where did that come from? Like I said, writing doesn’t often work like that for me. But when it does, I find it really hard to revise what I’ve written. It is what it is: either it comes out perfectly formed (I wish!) or I find myself completely at a loss as to how to fix it. The thing I can’t get back is the voice, the fluency. I also have a different way of writing, much more usual for me, which I don’t especially recommend, which is tortuous and painstaking and slow. But when I write like that rewriting is not a problem: getting the first draft out is the hard bit, and after that I feel like I know what I’m doing. (Emma Martin)

Robert Olen Butler does suggest that before revising anything substantially one should go into 'lucid dreaming' mode. I do do this before I put even one word on a first draft following an impulse of a story, and also before revision. Especially if something struck me as very off during a read through. I don't know if my experience revising a novel is of any value...perhaps it will open up the discussion, but since I am revising in chunks, perhaps talking about process might demystify it a bit.

E.g. I just went through one of the chapters in my novel yesterday. It's about 11,000 words. It's a very long chapter. There are some huge problems with it. The altercation between father and son sounds 'off', stilted, a little unreal. Also, I wanted to work in a couple of other threads that had been swimming and surfacing in various other sections and which I wanted woven more tightly in here. The chapter hadn't remotely done that.

In the past, a read-through with these many flaws engendered an overwhelming disgust, which I was then unable to swim past. It usually ended up with me partially chucking the story. For me, I'm not sure there's much of a difference between revising for a short story versus novel, except that in a novel, you can't afford to chuck it away. That would mean chucking away almost two years of consistent work!

The difference now is perhaps that I do make immediate mental notes as to the concrete things I think are not working. Then I go away. Let those feelings of disgust fade away. Usually takes about a week or so, during which I do other things. Read, chase my kids around, that sort of thing.

When I go back to read through again, if those same mental notes I made still ring through, I trust them. I revise based on that map. I almost without fail never think about craft elements. I don't do the checklist of plot/voice/structure etc. that there's some inordinate slippage into when I read someone else's story. So I think this is one fundamental difference between being a reader of my own work versus others. Having said that, I don't think craft elements don't work its way into revision. I think they become an organic part of a flaw. They are manifestations of a disease, not the underlying cause. Fix the underlying cause, the manifestation through 'voice' or weak plot etc. also goes away.  (Elaine Chiew)

Early on in a serious writer's life, the taking apart of a piece and reassembling it, following advice from peers is absolutely crucial. It's key to developing an instinctive grasp of craft, and allows us to be analytical in our stride rather than stop-starty, editor head v creator head. We need to learn to prevent those two modes of approaching work from being at odds with each other.

After a while I've found they work alongside each other invisibly, and when they do, that pulling apart and adding here and there will make a story less fluent, because when it was first written, the two were engaged, and if we revise with one head on, the story gets lopsided. ...So there comes a time when this is no longer the best mode for reworking pieces. It may work for some stories, but others need to be written again from scratch, to achieve that fluidity and unity.

There's one story in my collection that I rewrote, from scratch each time, about twenty times - different settings, different story telling modes. The version I ended up with was the only one that didn't feel clunky though it didn't get half way towards what I wanted it to say. But fiddling around with early versions led nowhere. It just had to come from a new sheet of paper.  (Susannah Rickards)

Oh goodness, I absolutely know what it is to write a story - a decent but still a little saggy story - and post for critique, come away with lots of useful, thoughtful suggestions and then use said thoughts and suggestions to KILL my story forever....Revision takes away the heart beat, the life of the story, and replaces it with coldness. But it shouldn’t have to meant that. It's to do with lightness of touch maybe. So as not to disturb the magic that's there whilst cleaning/shining lightly? (Sara Crowley)

I am really into walking ... as were the Surrealists, because it concentrates your thoughts, focuses them, and frees them up at the same time, your head has space and there's a rhythm.I find myself dipping in and out of ideas while I'm walking, I get so tuned in that ...I am practically a danger to myself and I don't notice anybody! It's all very routine, I choose virtually the same route every day, and I feel like it's just me and my creative process. I am not great when it comes to revision, I can get it all down on the page to begin, and then I go through and edit all the basics and then I get stuck. Very stuck.

And I'm so glad this has all been brought up here because I thought I was on my own with this. The more I dilute a piece with unsparing editing (which I something I am not averse to with my poems) the more I can't be bothered with it anymore. I have so many stories that I've done nothing with and probably never will, or maybe even can't do anything with, it's a shame. And ... I've had work taken apart by peers and haven't been able to mould it back together... it is weird, with the poetry I absolutely brutalise it sometimes. And that feels ok, maybe I have better instincts with poems because I'm more confident with them? I think a writer's main strength is instinct, trusting instincts and intuition, editing as you go along, getting caught in the heat of the moment. After that, there's a sober period where you look back on what you've done and doubts creep in... I think that by avoiding that hangover period after a first draft maybe that's key to seeing again with fresh eyes.(Melissa Lee-Houghton)

I find it hard to explain because it's more about (warmly) feeling something is right on the page rather than (coolly) cerebrally ascertaining something is right. It's a difficult question to answer because our feelings are ultimately produced in the brain and so, even though I say I'm revising by using my feelings, it is actually the brain that is doing it. When I write or revise it definitely feels more like an intuitive act rather than something that is consciously being controlled or directed. I also tend to revise as I write (as well as after I've 'finished' something) so the writing mode/editing mode are not too different for me. I hope this makes sense! (A J Ashworth)

I sort of think that if there are going to be changes then the whole thing has to start again - else, it's all a bit like trying to untie veins and plonk them somewhere else - the circulation gets messed up, and worse! (Rachel Fenton)

For me, some stories begin with an idea or mood. Words develop around that, but the original seed has to stay. Other pieces begin as bits but gradually acquire a heart. Others begin with a character in search of a plot. I don't think it's always right to re-trace one's steps when re-writing (a story can start on one track and end up on a completely different one) but it's worth remembering what made you want to write the piece in the first place. And not just remembering - keeping those early sketches and drafts. (litrefs)

Because of my sporadic writing schedule I tend to write in short bursts and can sometimes rewrite a paragraph twenty times from scratch. It always boils down to whatever works for you though I guess. One time I wrote a novella and after an edit I got a 3000 word story out of it (that one still stings a little) but as long as you get something you're happy with at the end I don't think it matters how you get there. I don't mind working for months to get perfection. (Alex)

I'm rubbish at working on/revising short stories. There's something in me that insists on the flow of the piece in its entirety, so every time I edit a part of the story I go back to the beginning and read it through again until I hit another part that 'doesn't work' according to the vision I have for the piece. Edit, and repeat. It takes far too long I'm sure, there must be a better way. (Clare King)

I am very jealous of anyone like [David] Vann who can write a first draft as a final draft. My process tends to involve writing in excess of what the story requires and then a trimming back to a shape that best fits the story revealed in the first draft. This can mean cutting out a third to a half of what I've written, shaping the rest as I polish.

This not to say that extra writing is wasted. The extra work gives me a deeper understanding of the characters, while the trimmed sections go into files for use later. I trawl through them from time to time for character stuff and description that will serve the story I am drafting or as a spring board for a new piece.

A little time consuming but the whole process is kind of like writing a block of text then scuplting it into shape, knocking chunks of it off as I go.

An interesting method of editing is Andrew Cowan's, I have heard him in interview explaining that he writes his first sentence, then redrafts that until perfect then writes his next and redrafts that until perfect and he continues this process for whole novels. Now that's what I call time consuming. (Dan Powell)

My method of revising/editing is as chaotic as my creative process. I was taught that you write (the first draft) for yourself, and revise with the reader in mind. But (for me) it's not that simple and there may be many drafts because it's in the process of writing, that I find a sense of my story and the revision process is about making sense of that story. Even if it's a short story, this often turns out to be a long process, especially when my thoughts on what I've written shift, which is inevitable over time. On my blog, I've been likening the process of revising/rewriting/editing to knitting; being prepared to unravel, pick up dropped stitches, rework the pattern, but really I think it's more instinctive than that, more like the creative process involved in painting. I know it's right when it feels, looks and sounds right. (Diane Becker)

What works for me is leaving it for a long time and then entering the text in a new creative headspace, almost rewriting it even if I might just change one paragraph to get it right. Dreamy creative is better than analytical in my world ... You have to leave your FEELINGS in even if you're clutching the red editing pen at the same time  (Louise Halvardsson)

Appreciating the strength of analysing the craft and applying that analysis to the editing process is fine. However - I do think we need to be flexible - and not slaves to any method at all. I think we need to embrace as many ways of doing this thing as we can, and understand that what will work one day, on one piece of work, may not be right for another, on another day.

I guess that when we get a way down the track, our understanding of our own drafting process can encompass some of the 'revision' process, as we go. So what comes out, has already been subconsciously smoothed.

I also think that might work for short fiction, flashes, shorter short stories - but the more complex a piece of becomes, the less likely it is to work well. So consideration of structure, how far it is working to deliver the end product you want, arches over the craft elements within. Thats how I approached revising my longer work recently. I think...(Vanessa Gebbie)

The received view seems to be that you are in a creative/right brain state for stage one (writing) and in an analytical/left brain state for stage two (revising) – there should be an unconscious creative burst followed by an analytical going over. But I think in reality it's more complex than that, as this discussion shows. To be honest, I don't feel such a big difference between the two stages. Maybe I'm just doing it 'wrong' - but when I write and also when I evaluate what I've written, I try to think it and feel it at the same time. (Emma)

I used to be all about the emetic first draft – I just got it all out on the page, beginning to end, before I edited a single word. Then I'd look at the thing as a whole and make big changes. Then the next rewrite would be smaller changes, and smaller and smaller until I'm just fiddling with individual word choices.

I've slowed down a bit over the past few months, both in terms of my overall output and how quickly I write each sentence. Now I find that my first drafts are slower, but with each draft I change fewer things. Maybe one day I'll get to the point where I perfect each sentence before moving on, but I doubt it. I prefer to find my way through the story as I go, rather than plan it all out beforehand.

That said, I love editing and rewriting. The blank page still scares me a little, and there's comfort in knowing that I have the framework of a story already there. (Kirsty Logan)

And here are quotes from other writers and an editor, most from Paris Review interviews, about what they do - and don't do:

Marilynne Robinson:

If I write something and don't like it, I basically toss it. And I try to write it again or I write something else that has the same movement. But as far as going back and working over something that I've already written -- I really don't do that. I know there's a sentence that I need, and I just run it through my mind until it sounds right. Most of my revision occurs before I put words down on a paper.

Truman Capote:

I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I am lying down.... I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also i longhand. Then I type a third draft on yellow paper, a very special kind of yellow paper. No, I don't get out of bed to do this. I balance the machine on my knees.... When the yellow draft is finished, I put the manuscript away for a while, a week, a month, maybe longer. When I take it out again, I read it as coldly as possible, then read it aloud to a friend or two, and decide what changes I want to make and whether or not I want to publish it. I've thrown away rather a few short stories, an entire novel and half of another. But if all goes well, I type the final version on white paper and that's that.

Hemingway:

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped.... I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied. 

 Jorge Luis Borges:

Interviewer: When you wrote your stories did you revise a great deal?

JLB: At first I did. Then I found out that when a man reaches a certain age, he has found his real tone. Nowadays I try to go over what I've written after a fortnight or so, and of course there are many slips and repetitions to be avoided, certain favourite tricks that should not be overworked. But I think that what I write nowadays is always on a certain level and that I can't better if very much, nor can I spoil it very much, either. Consequently I let it go, forget all about it, and think about what I am doing at the time. 

 William Faulkner:

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. ...

Sometimes technique charges in and takes command of the dream before the writer himself can get his hands on it. That is tour de force and the finished work is simply a matter of fitting bricks neatly together, since the writer knows probably every single word right to the end before he puts the first one down. ... The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it. Since none of my work has met my own standards I must judge it on the basis of that one which caused me the most grief and anguish, as the mother loves the child who became the thief or murderer more than the one who became the priest.

Georges Simenon:

Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence - cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut. 

Interviewer: is that the nature of most of your revision?

GS: Almost all of it.

Interviewer: It is not revising the plot pattern?

GS: Oh, I never touch anything of that kind. 

 

Gary Fisketjon, editor-at-large at Knopf. He has edited the works of Raymond Carver, Bret Easton Ellis, Patricia Highsmith, Cormac McCarthy, Jay McInerney, Tobias Wolff, and Haruki Murakami.:

[I]t all starts with the editing, which is when I see most clearly what distinguishes this particular book. […] In my comments, what I hope to do is akin to giving the author a fresh look at something that has been labored on so long that certain things have become invisible. Countless thousands of decisions factor into the writing of any book, and it defies mathematical odds that each and every one was the best decision; but after someone has rewritten sentences and chapters or whatever God knows how many times freshness is hard to come by[… That] can occur when the book is finally set in type, as opposed to whatever computer typeface was used on earlier drafts: suddenly a writer will say, Well, that looks funny, or doesn’t read right, or whatever. This is another means—though merely visually—of getting a fresh or different look at something one has looked at so many times before.

Dorothy Parker:

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven. 

Eudora Welty:

Often I shift things from the very beginning to the very end. Small things - one fact, one word - but things important to me. It's possible I have a reverse mind and do things backwards, being a broken lefthander. Just so I've caught on to my weakness.... I do [rewrite considerably.] Some things I let alone from the first to the last - the kernel of the story. You know enough not to touch something if it's right. The hardest thing for me is getting people in and out of rooms - the mechanics of a story. ...I find that very challenging, especially to describe an action that I don't do very well myself, like sewing.

Alice Munro:

I don't grasp it very readily at all, the "it" being whatever I'm trying to do. I often get on the wrong track and have to haul myself back... I could be writing away one day and think I've done very well; I've done more pages than I usually do. Then I get up the next morning and realize I don't want to work on it anymore. When I have a terrible reluctance to go near it, when I would have to push myself to continue, I generally know something is badly wrong. Often, in about three quarters of what I do, I reach a point somewhere, fairly early on, when I think I'm going to abandon this story. I get myself through a day or two of bad depression, grouching around. And I think of something else I can write. It's sort of like a love affair: you're getting out of disappointment and misery by going out with some man you really don't like at all, but you haven't noticed that yet. Then, I will suddenly come up with something about the story that I abandoned; I will see how to do it. But that only seems to happen after I've said, No, this isn't going to work, forget it.

 ...The whole process might take up to a week, the time of trying to think it through, trying to retrieve it, then giving it up and thinking about something else, and then getting it back, usually quite unexpectedly, when I am in the grocery store or out for a drive. I'll think, Oh well, I have to do it from the point of view of so-and-so and I have to cut this character out, and of course these people are not married, or whatever. The big change, which is usually the radical change...

I don't know if it makes the story better. What it does is make it possible for me to continue to write. That's what I mean by saying I don't think I have this overwhelming thing that comes in and dictates to me. I only seem to get a grasp on what I want to write about with the greatest difficulty. And barely. ... I can see the ways a story could go wrong. I see the negative things more easily than the positive things. Some stories don't work as well as others, and some stories are lighter in conception than others. They feel lighter to me. 

Just in compiling all this I feel better, better about not knowing what I am doing, how I do what I do when it works, how to fix something when I feel it just isn't working. I especially feel heartened by that last quote from Alice Munro. I think perhaps it in some way this and other people's comments validate my feeling that I need to not focus too hard at the thing I am working on - although I "look away" by playing online scrabble rather than going for a walk or to the grocery store! Well, I am still working this out. Anything that you do that no-one's mentioned? Let's keep this discussion going.


Addendum:
I was pointed towards Wells Tower's revision process, here's a quote from an interview in the Iowa Review:

Sarah Fay: You revised these stories for eight years. Is that right?

Wells Tower: Something like that. I did such violent revision to the stories that my editor started to worry about me. To some extent the revisions were informed by trying to make the story better, but it did get to a point where I would just keep revising and revising and revising not out of any real editorial intelligence but just because I wanted to be a better writer than I am. My feeling about revision is that we don’t really know what our stories are about even after the fifth or sixth draft. It’s not until I’ve got some distance from a story that I can look at it and see that there is actually a real emotional problem that the story is hinting at. Then the process of revision is about choosing characters, and scenes, and moments, and style that will get at that emotion in the most effective way.

SF: You’ve said you revised the story “Retreat” kamikaze-style.

WT: It was originally published in McSweeney’s from the point of view of the younger brother. The younger brother is this smartass who is pretty sympathetic, and his older brother is this terrible blowhard. The older brother behaves badly and continues to behave badly and is ultimately punished for his bad behavior by ingesting a possibly lethal bit of rotten moose meat. To me, that seemed like a flat line on the moral complexity curve. When I revised it, I thought it would be such a better story—a more interesting assignment—to try to tell it from the standpoint of the unsympathetic character. So that’s what I did.
SF: Do you treat all of your revisions as “assignments”?

WT: I did similar things with a lot of the stories. Often I didn’t look at the first draft when I went back to revise. “Revision” was writing a new story, trying to germinate a new story from the initial bit of inspirational DNA.

New Rules for Writers

Thanks to Twitter, I came across this thought-provoking article by Anis Shivani called
"New Rules For Writers: Ignore Publicity, Shun Crowds, Refuse Recognition And More". This is what he has the fabulous temerity to suggest: on the Huffington Post,

These "rules" totally go against every prescription for writing success you'll hear as a young writer from all quarters: the conformity-driven MFA system, the publishing industry's hype-machine, successful writers who act either like prima donnas or untouchable mystics, the marketing experts who seek to impose advertising rules on the writing product. Overpaid editors, illiterate agents, arrogant gatekeepers, and stupid reviewers want you to bargain away your soul for a pittance -- the bids in the market escalate downward, a reverse auction where you compete with the lowest of the low to be acknowledged as an entity that counts.

Why take part in the game at all? Who has ever come out of it alive, able to set up tent and build followers on the other side? Why not accept the reality that writers aren't forged in social harmony and peer input and obedient fellowship, but in a region where madmen and insomniacs find no comfort? To get you started on a regimen designed to pull you away from the mother-teat of the writing industry, here are the ten commandments:

His 10 Commandments include such words of wisdom (and I really mean that) as: "Disobey the System. The system--from the MFA program to that fat-ass editor sitting in glorious judgment over your manuscript--will never reward originality. So fuck it!...Once you're on everyone's shit list, then your mind will open up--visions you never thought possible, leaps of imagination, idle curiosity revving up into high gear--knowing that no one will ever be pleased by anything you write" and "Seek Unemployment.... Find ways to be unemployed, doing nothing, finding enough time on your hands, after you've met your basic needs, to wander into unknown realms of thought and imagination."

These really are excellent "rules", I'm tempted to print them out and stick 'em above my desk. I do take issue with his one rule about only reading dead writers ("Treat every contemporary with dire suspicion, until they stand they test of time--and most of them won't, you'll see. Read no one living with attention and gratitude, unless they've proven themselves in relation to your eternal touchstones.") That seems a little much. And we'll turn a blind eye to Mr Shivani's website, which is an excellent example of the evil publicity he is cautioning writers against indulging in!

But there's a lot of common sense in here. I will leave you with: 

Don't Pursue a Niche. You're told, in every dimension of life, find a niche, find your own little corner, and become really good at it. Find that unique voice of yours, stemming from your involuntary pain and pleasure, find it and hold on to it and dispense it with greater and greater intensity until the end of your writing life. Don't do it. Be all over the place. The only way to expand the boundaries of your art is if you recognize no specialties. Try your hand at things you're sure you'll fail at. Find the most ludicrous, nonsensical, absurd ventures to spend/waste your time at, and you'll discover unforeseeable payoffs. 

Yes. I like that. Read the whole article here.

Guest blog post on Tomlit

First, just to let you know, I will be publishing the Sean O'Faolain prize longlist here on my blog after the winner has been announced, in 2 weeks.

Second, I am delighted to be a guest on the Tomlit blog today, talking about trust between a writer and a reader. I wrote this post, "It's All About Trust", a few months ago, it was interesting for me to re-read it given the 849 entries I just read for the S O'F! Here's a snippet:

I don't read to relax, not in that same way. I don't read to be entertained, to watch the story unfold. I read to become engaged with the story, to have it enter me, grip me and twist my insides. I want to be changed by what I have read. If it is all there for me, laid out in front of my eyes, where is my place inside this story or novel? What is the role of my imagination if everything is handed to me on a plate?

 Read the rest of the blog post.

My judging process or How I read 849 Stories in Two Months

I've finished the judging for the Sean O'Faolain short story competition, sent my decision in on Monday. The longlist will be announced next week, I'll let you know when it's posted. In the meantime, I thought I'd reflect on how it was for me, what I learned as a reader and as a writer.

849 stories. No sifters, no first readers. Just me. I'd heard from previous judges that I should pace myself otherwise I could be overwhelmed! So I did. And although I was getting 100 or so stories at a time - and two large parcels in the post of about 100 printed stories each - I remained mostly calm. It's a joy and a privilege, first to be asked to pick only what I love, and second to have hundreds of writers entrust me with your stories. I don't take that lightly. I've done it myself, many times. You do send out a small piece of you whenever you submit anything. I took that responsibility very seriously.

I am not, of course, going to mention individual stories, nothing like that. But I thought it might be useful - for me and for others - to talk about what it was like to be the sole judge. Of course, each judge is different, each short story competition is different, and most will have readers and only pass on a long- or short-list to the final judge.

What I tried to do when opening or picking up each new story for the first read was to say to the story: "Wow me. Show me what you've got!" and be completely open. At the beginning, as I read the first 100, I was quite nervous. What if I didn't find a single story that I liked? I mean, really, I'm very picky, I read lots and lots of short stories, all the time, and I know what a great story feels like, what it does to you. I was going to settle for nothing less than that physical jolt of a fantastic short story, that slap in the face, that sensation that you simply can't read anything else, you have to stop and digest what you've just read.

As I read, stories started making it into the Maybe pile. These were stories that stood out for various reasons: beautiful use of language, strong character voices that I could hear as I read, unique settings or situations, utterly bizarre plots I felt I had to read again!

The ones that didn't make it into the Maybe pile were those that tended to take a long time to get to any action, to explain too much to me, to overdo it on the background information, to not have a "voice" so that I couldn't hear the character, or to use very flowery language which I felt got in the way rather than enhanced the story. Stories that didn't make the Maybe pile were those that felt as though I'd read them before, somewhere, that they were familiar, too familiar, in terms of storyline or characters.  

Very very few stories made it straight into the Yes pile, and those were the ones that on first read gave me that jolt. No doubt about it. They shook me up. They had everything that, for this reader, makes a great and winning story.

After reading a few hundred of the earliest entries, I had quite a few Maybes and one or two Yesses and so I was feeling far less nervous. I had stories I liked, loved even, and from that point on, while also saying to each story "Wow me", I was also reading with a slightly different eye. As more stories went into the Maybe pile and I realised I had "enough" stories that I liked, I think that I was tougher on the later stories. I asked slightly more of them, I said to them "So, how are you better than the ones I already like?" And as I got closer and closer to the last of the entries, this probably became more exacerbated, as I imagine it would for anybody.

I don't believe that this meant I gave less consideration to the later-submitted entries. Every story got equal consideration. But it is an inevitable part of a process like this. One way to completely avoid this might have been to wait until all the entries were in and then read them in random order, unrelated to when they were submitted. But that would have meant reading 849 stories in one week - and that would have been impossible!

However, on second read, things changed. I was going back and re-reading the Maybes, and the earlier entries were now being read in light of the later entries! So the process was balanced out. Several Maybes were moved to the No pile, and then I had my longlist, and it includes stories that were sent all throughout the entry period.

I then began the next stage, reading the few Yesses and the Maybes again and assigning each a score. This seemed to me to be the only way to try and narrow the list down. I didn't have a very elaborate scoring system, it was more of a gut reaction to each story. And on second read, not all the Yesses stayed in the Yes pile. I was looking for a story that gave up more of itself with every read - a story that has layers, that remains fabulous even when you know how it ends. This, for me, is the mark of a great story. There were several I had adored on first read but on second read, the magic, the jolt, just wasn't there. 

Anyway, narrowing it down was incredibly hard. All the longlisted stories wowed and delighted me in some way. All of them. Really, getting onto my longlist was the major achievement because it meant that a story leapt out at me from amongst hundreds. 

So, what made the move from longlist to shortlist? Much of it was down to those extremely difficult aspects of a story: beginnings and endings. In a few instances, stories had quite slow beginnings, they took too long, in my opinion, to get to the action. Once they got there, the story was great, but they needed a bit more revision. In other cases, endings let a story down. The story had gripped me, the voice was great, but I'd felt that the ending didn't satisfy me, didn't give me any kind of jolt. 

And what of the winners? Well, that was really really hard. In the end, all I could do was go with my gut feeling. It was so close, between all of the top stories. But the 1st and 2nd placed stories were the ones that brought me to tears as I read them again and again, they just had that power. I felt that they addressed so many themes so well and concisely, without labouring a point, and there was really nothing in there that wasn't in the service of the story, nothing extraneous. They both used language beautifully, with rhythm. And they had an oddness that I found very appealing but they were completely consistent within the odd worlds they created. 

I am sure that a different judge would have picked different winners. Maybe a similar longlist, I don't know, but I chose a winner that I felt really reflected my personal short story tastes, what I love to read. You'll get to read all six top stories in the next issue of Southword, so you can judge for yourself!

Is there anything you - and I - can take from this as writers? Well, here's the big one: to catch the eye of a judge - or a sifter - you have to do just that. Be eye-catching. Be DIFFERENT. But, and here's the hard thing, not gratuitously different. Not whizz-bang-let-off-fireworks different. Being different can be very very quiet. Being different can mean tackling the same theme - love and relationships, family dynamics, etc... - in a way that only you can do in your writing. Catch the judge's eye with your love for language. Or with a character who has such a distinctive voice from the first line that the reader is dying to find out more about him and what happens to him. 

Does a story submitted to a competition have to be different from one submitted to a literary journal? Now that's a very good question. It's been floated that there are "winning stories", that a competition winner is somehow more polished, better crafted. Well, I can only speak for myself but in the three comps I've judged this year, I wasn't interested in polish and craft. I'd far rather read a slightly messy and somewhat confusing story that took risks than a very neat story that plays it safe. 

I think, reading back over this blog post, that in fact none of it is very useful! I can't generalise much about anything. I still know what I love to read and what I don't. But there is never any way of knowing what a competition judge loves to read. As I mentioned a few months ago, I definitely don't love only the kinds of stories I write. 

So, in conclusion: write only what you want to write. Write only what you have to write. If you get longlisted, well that means you caught the judge's eye. If you don't that means that the judge liked other kinds of stories. Don't be disheartened. Send it out again. I'm happy to be back to doing that myself. I just sent 6 stories in to 2 flash fiction competitions. Will my experience as a judge help when they fail to get anywhere? I'm not sure, it will still sting. But I'll just send them out again.

Strictly Writing: Nothing Beats Time

I owe this blog a proper post but it's probably a good sign that I've been too busy - with writing-related doings, of course! In the meantime, I have a guest blog post on the excellent Strictly Writing blog today, where I come clean about my failure to leave a new story long enough so that I could see what it needed doing.

Finally, I wrote a 1000-word story. I was excited to have something “long” (yes, you may snicker). I was so in love with the voice and the language, I thought it was great. I gave it to my writing group for critique, they spotted places where more information was needed but didn't give any “big picture” comments. So I thought, wow, that was quick: a finished story, and swiftly dispatched it to several competitions.

Read the rest of the blog post here. Does this happen to you too?

Short Circuit - win a copy of the indispensible guide to the short story!

There will be much much  more on this over the next few weeks and months, but for right now, head over to Salt's blog to win a copy of Short Circuit -  the hot-off-the-press Guide to the Art of the Short Story, edited by my great friend and colleague, the wondrous and extremely hard-working Vanessa Gebbie. Short Circuit includes my essay on flash fiction and I am deeply honoured to be in the company of so many amazing writers who contributed to this book. A little more about the book:

Short Circuit is the first textbook written by prize-winning writers for students and more experienced practitioners of the short story. The 288 page guide brings together twenty-four specially-commissioned essays from well-published short story writers who are also prize winners of the toughest short story competitions in the English language, including five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall, winner of The National Short Story Award — and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award.

Go win yourself a copy, the three questions are easy for any short story lover - or very Googleable! And if you don't happen to be the lucky one, then it's available from Salt at a 20% discount right now. You won't regret it. Watch this space, and the Short Review blog, for more.

Can Writers Learn from the Art World?

I have an interesting topic I'd like to discuss, and would love to know what others think. First, a few words on what I am reading right now. A great blog called Writers Read asked me this a few weeks ago and they have just posted my answer today - and you might be surprised that it's not all short stories, or even fiction!

And, to shock you even more, dear blog readers, sometimes.... I just don't want to read short stories. (I know!) Sometimes... I want to have that delicious experience of immersing myself in one story for several hours. I did this yesterday, and in one day read two  novels, straight through: Dear Everybody, by Michael Kimball (thanks, Nik, for the recommendation) and the Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano. Both were excellently written, devastating and moving. Both, oddly, dealt with characters who were deeply wounded in some way, and with the themes of disconnection from one's family, but in very different ways. I highly recommend them both.

 Now, to the other topic I wanted to discuss. I read an article in the New Yorker the other day about a 36-year-old artist who is now the latest Wunderkind (well, slightly older) in the art world for his odd installations (wax sculptures of women that melt as the exhibition progresses; a large pit dug in the floor of the gallery) and sculptures. His works fetch enormous sums of money, in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and this is mentioned in the Arts articles as if it is simply accepted, a matter of course. So I say this: what is it about "art" of this kind that such sums are demanded and are received but that when it comes to the written word, the situation is so different? Even talking about artists who are not the latest Hot Item, a painting in a small local gallery has a price tag of several thousand pounds. And yet... if I get £10 for a short story, I am thrilled.

Here's my question: are we not asking enough for our work? Is it something to do with a sculpture, installation or painting being a "one-off", in some way unreproducable (even though this is not always the case)? Is it that the collector or buyer wants to own the art in a way that you couldn't own a piece of writing? And... is there any way we writers could somehow emulate these artists, by putting our work up for sale instead of submitting it to a journal? Any other ideas, thinking outside the box on this one? Is there a way we might write one-off pieces too, something we can guarantee is unique and unreproducable or  - and this is a big question - do people view an object that is made up of words, which are the currency everyone trades in, as far far less valuable, as something they could "probably do themselves if they tried"?

I would love to start a proper discussion about this. What do you think? While it is quite common to hear that someone is a poet, novelist and playwright, for example, I rarely hear of someone who is a painter and short story writer. Why the gulf? Is there "art" and then "art"??

Writing and Place: Guest Blog Post by Nik Perring

"Place" is something that is preoccupying me now, as I deal with the fact of having moved countries a month ago. Since I am still processing, I thought I would ask my friend, author, writing colleague and blogger Nik Perring, how where he is affects him and his writing. If anyone else would like to do a guest blog post on this topic, please drop me a line!

Where are you?
In my office, which is an a house, which is in a village, which is about a half hour’s drive from Manchester and a twenty minute drive from the Peak District. In the UK.

How long have you been there?
I say this with a bit of regret and considerable frustration: pretty much all of my life.

I didn’t go to university, I chose to work instead, so I missed out on that experience which is something now, that I kind of regret. That said, I don’t think I’d have ended up being a writer if I had gone, so really I should be grateful to fate for that.

The other reason for regret and frustration is that I shouldn’t really be here, but that’s another story.

Were you there when you wrote I met a Roman Last Night, What Did You Do? If not, where were you?

Yes. I wrote it here, where I’m sitting. At this desk, from this very chair.

How do you think your location affected that book?

I’m not sure that it did. Not in any conscious or, more accurately, intentional way. Though I think there’s a possibility that being here for so long has made me interested in other things and places and people, made me actively Find Stuff Out, looking outward – and also made me look inside for inspiration and stories.

How do you think where you are affects what you write about and how you write?

Again, I’m not sure that it does in any conscious way – speaking for myself. While at the same time I’ll contradict myself and say: an awful lot. I think, in answering this, I’m also trying to find out what I think.

I like to think that I write about what interests me, about characters I make up who interest me. Now that could be a young lad who ends up meeting various and exciting historical peoples who feature on the National Curriculum, as easily as it could be about a nosey librarian who might be getting the wrong end of a stick about the intentions of one of her borrowers. I like to think that the people I write about are as universal as they can be and not restricted by place, as much as that’s possible; I think that a hugely important factor in good story telling is having characters that people can recognise – where they’re from or where they are, in my opinion, is something that comes second to that – although, clearly where they are will, to some degree, make them who they are and/or make them act the way they do. Complicated, huh?

Now for the contradictory part. All that said, I think it’s impossible to have been somewhere with it not having affected you in some way, good or bad. As writers, we soak things up, quite naturally – and it’s what has been absorbed that provides us with the stuff that our characters and settings come from. And books. Reading books does that too.

I think it comes down to this: a fiction writer’s biggest tool is his/her imagination. It’s the mind. The ability to make stuff up. The ability to make characters believable. The ability to show us their world (not the writer’s). How those characters are formed, where the ideas for them come from, aren’t that important to a reader because they, normally, won’t have anything to do with the story. So where a writer’s been and who they’ve met and the experiences they’ve had will all have fuelled his or her subconscious understanding or observation of people and places and the interactions between them, it’s what goes on top, what adds colour and character to their work that’s the difference, and that’s something that has to come from the imagination.

For me - and again I can only speak for myself here and I appreciate lots of people will disagree (I’m also speaking as someone whose work doesn’t often have a particularly strong lean towards realism) – a story is about a character or characters. It’s the story of what a character does, how she or he reacts to something, what they do to cope with something, how they feel about something - whatever that something may be. So a story is about people. And people are everywhere. And those somethings they have to deal with are pretty similar from place to place. If we’re talking about a character dealing with, say, ‘loss’ for instance: what places in the world don’t have people dealing with, or having dealt with, loss? The kind of loss may be shaped by their location, but that fundamental emotion is something that can be understood, recognised and empathised with, wherever you’re from. I also think that as emotions are something that are easily translated it’s often not essential to identify where a story’s set.

What I find I’m discovering, as I contradict myself and circle the point for an answer, is that a lot of this is down to a writer’s perception of themselves. It’s about ego. At the moment, for a hundred different reasons, I’m frustrated with where I am so I think I’m trying to find as many ways as I can to say that I don’t take inspiration from this place, when clearly I do, whether I want to or not. (I’m also discovering how much contradiction is part of my life.)

And how does location affect how a writer writes?

Tough one. I’d guess that writers have a compulsion to write. So if we’re talking about routine: they’ll fit it in somehow regardless of where they are. I’d also guess that where they are could either inspire them to write about their location or go completely the opposite way and cause them to write about somewhere else as a means of escape. Or a mixture of the two. You’re probably best asking them!

Complex creatures, writers. And they don’t have as much control over what they write as they may like to think, it would seem.

So that’s what I think about that, I’d be curious to hear what others’ opinions are.


Thanks so much, Nik, for expressing all the contradictions involved in thinking about how where we are affects what we do as writers. Anyone else?

This morning I discovered

This morning I discovered that I use the word "perhaps" far too much in my writing. So I deleted all of them.

This morning I discovered that I could write the ending to a story whose middle I didn't know, and then the ending became another story, something that wasn't and now is.

This morning I discovered that the middle of a story whose beginning and end I have only needed to be one line, and it tied them up and there it was, done.

This morning was a good morning. Last night I said "First thing, I'm going to take my coffee and my laptop and go into my study", and this morning I did that, for the first time, straight down into the cellar. Now I can go back up again, a good morning.

Writers' service announcement:

I found this great blog, Mira's List, where Mira lists Grants, Fellowships and Residencies for Artists, Writers and Musicians, updated very regularly. What a gem! (Am rather intrigued by the 6-month residency in France that she just posted: "Short story projects are preferred but not essential." How often do you read that, gentle reader?!)

Also - Upcoming Deadlines - always good to get entries in early:
(Inspired by Teresa, I have added a list to the right of the places I have submitted to that I am waiting to hear back from. Makes me feel busy.)

Aug 1st: Bellevue Literary review competition, 5000 words, writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body. Prizes: $1000 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, $1000 Carter V. Cooper Memorial Prize for Nonfiction $1000 Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry. Postal and online entry. Fee $15, for extra $5 you receive subscription to their excellent magazine. Open to international entrants.

Aug 7th: Manchester Fiction Prize, 5000 word short story, unpublished and not entered for any other competition. First prize £10,000. Postal and online entry. Fee £15, payable online. Open to international entrants.

Aug 1st-31st: Norton Hint Fiction, 25 word stories. I wrote about this here.

Aug 15th: Flatman Crooked competition, Judged by the wondrous Aimee Bender, 7000 word short story. 1st place receives $1000.00 and publication in the final anthology of ‘08/’09 season. Top 10 finalists will also be published in the final anthology and get special recognition on the website. Fee $15, payable online. Open to international entrants.

Aug 31st: Juked Fiction and Poetry Prizes. Any length short story; up to 5 poems, ten pages in total! First prize for each genre: $500 and publication in our upcoming print issue, Juked #7. Fee $15, payable online. Postal or online entry. Open to international entrants.

Sep 30th: PANK magazine 1,001 Awesome words. One of my favourite lit mags is holding its first contest. Any form or formlessness, 1,001 words or less. 1st Place: $750* and publication in PANK 4.
2nd Place: $500* and publication in PANK 4. 3rd Place: $250* and publication in PANK 4. Fee $15 for one entry, $25 for two, every entrant gets a copy of PANK #4, payable online. All entries will be considered for publication in PANK. Online entry. Open to international entrants.


What are you waiting for??

A Poet Too? Maybe.

I've had a lovely week (what day is it today?) travelling around with J, from London to Cambridge, cross country to Cornwall and the gorgeous and organic Bangors B&B which ticked every "perfect B&B" box, from the views to the food, the fabulously friendly proprietors to the 3-week old kittens (missing them terribly). We are now in the Brecon Beacons, which is absolutely stunning, and a surprise is planned for tonight, can't tell you anything about that yet.

Internet access has been sporadic and brief, snatches here and there, but to my delight when I logged on a few days ago, I have had a poem accepted by Contrary magazine, a (paying) online literary journal I greatly admire. This is an enormous thrill, mainly because I have only been writing poetry for a few months and frankly had no idea if I was being utterly presumptious in calling it "poetry" at all. An acceptance by a poetry editor tells me that maybe I am allowed to call it that!

So, a problem. On my website, my tagline is:

"Tania Hershman. I write. Stories."

Well, umm, I have also adapted two of my stories into short plays and one into a radio play. And now... poetry. So, what do I put?

"Tania Hershman. I write. Stories. Poems. Plays adapted from stories."

Not quite so snappy. And if I just put

"Tania Hershman. I write."

it's too general, the easily-distracted surfer visiting sites for a micro-second (yes, I mean me too) might not take the time to find out what it is that I write.

Suggestions please! It's lovely to have this kind of existential dilemma, I never imagined myself writing anything other than short stories. I am really enjoying poetry: I have stopped writing flash fiction in an attempt to wean myself off the instant gratification that comes from writing a complete story in 20 minutes and allowing me to work on longer pieces, but poetry is different, lovely, allowing for something odd to emerge, but not, it appears, interfering with my story-writing in the way that flash did. It's as if I have it in a different compartment, it is a seperate thing. Anyone else feel like this?

Enquiring Young Minds

I had the most wonderful time yesterday during my visit back to my old school, South Hampstead High School. (On the left is the poster they put up about my upcoming talk).

I wrote to them when I saw they on the school's website that they had a Creative Writing club, something that hadn't been there in my time (a phrase I came to overuse considerably during my visit!). We arranged that I would come during lunch break and talk to a group of 14- and 15-year-old girls (it's an all-girls school) about... well, I decided I would ask them what they wanted to talk about!

I have to admit being a little nervous about how it might be going back to my old school, a place that wasn't chock full of happy memories. But, frankly, either my memory is so bad or the school has changed so radically - I barely recognised a single corner!

I met with Barnaby, the teacher who had set up the meeting, and he took me and the girls into the library where we sat around a table, and lunch - including Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers, what is the education system coming to?? - was brought.

We were joined by more and more pupils as time went on...and after a bit, we decided that instead of eating lunch and moving me to the more formal section of the library, where chairs had been set up for my "talk", I'd just talk here and anyone could ask questions.

They wanted to know how I became a writer, so I told them all the lengthy tale, from age 6 (voracious reader, etc...), through the sidetracked-into-science years from 13 to 23 (A Levels, University degree in Maths and Physics, MSc in Philosophy of Science), science journalism (1994-2007) and the joys of meeting scores of optimistic entrepreneurs and scientists who believed they would change the world, and then the return to fiction, slowly, slowly. Ending up with: the book.

I told them how it was a meeting with a friend of a friend in Jerusalem who had published a number of short stories that showed me that "real" people wrote fiction, it wasn't for some exalted few, who had studied English at University, who knew the right people, et...Meeting him showed me that maybe, maybe, I could do it too.


The night before, I had heard neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield talk at Jewish Book week (blog post coming soon) about her fears for the younger generation that staring at a screen instead of reading books would turn them into thrill-seekers with no regard for the consequences of their actions, instead of "contextual" people who could see connections between events. Well, meeting this wonderful group of pupils certainly disproved that theory. They were thoughtful, attentive, curious, calm. (There was no texting going on, no yawning, no giggling...they assured me they weren't there just because of the free lunch and Chocolate Fingers). They were delightful.

I read them one of the shortest stories from The White Road and Other Stories, Plaits (click on the link for a video of me reading the story), which is a page and a half in length. It goes down well generally, it's a good example of flash fiction. And I was so impressed when they asked me questions about parts of the story, how did I choose certain things. I explained that when I write, it isn't a conscious experience, I am in some kind of "zone" and I do feel it comes through me instead of from me. They asked if I wrote anything else apart from short stories, so I mentioned that I'd adapted two stories into short plays, and that I had an idea for a film script. They asked what my next project was and I said probably it would be a flash fiction collection. But I stressed that what I realised after the book was published was that for me it is all about the writing. As long as I am writing, I'm happy. And that writing is like a muscle - you have to keep it toned, keep it flexible, by writing as much as possible.

At the end, when they really had to go off to History, I was thrilled when several of them asked if they could buy a copy (of course, I'd brought along a few just in case... not sure whether lunch money would stretch that far!). I signed the books for them and they left. Then Eleanor, one of the two librarians (the pic below is of her and Sarah, the other librarian), took me on a tour of the school just to see if there was anything that rang a bell.

Nothing looked that familiar (I don't remember much of my childhood, that's why I like to say I make stuff up), but I was stunned by what the pupils were doing. I did O'Levels, I was one of the last years to do that exam at age 16, and in the classrooms the cry that was most often heard was "Will this be on the exam? Do we need to know this?". How different things are now! GCSEs, AS Levels... Below are the clothes some of the pupils (14-year-olds) made as part of their courses:

The atmosphere at the school was relaxed, creative, stimulating. The teachers had a lovely rapport with the pupils. In my day, from what I do remember, we were always being told off for something, whether it be our behaviour or or clothes (the uniform rules were pretty rigid). We didn't make anything, we weren't given free rein to express ourselves, there was no Creative Writing Club.

And we certainly didn't have writers and artists visiting to talk about the process of creating (novelist Naomi Alderman and poet Danny Abse are just two of the recent visitors). Had I seen at the age of 14 that "real people" can be writers, artists and poets, how might that have changed my life? I don't regret anything I have done over the past 30 years, certainly not studying science, which I love, although I could never be a scientist. But to be shown so many possibilities, so many different ways of being and doing in this world, must open young minds to all that they could be... and more.

I left feeling that I had learned as much from them as they might perhaps have learned from me, and that rather than it being a traumatic return to school, it had been a joyful sharing of creativity and excitement about short stories and writing.

PS That night, back at Jewish Book Week, I found this in the bookshop, run by Foyles, something I never would have dreamt of in my wildest dreams at the age of 14: