It's The White Road and Other Stories' 2nd birthday of this week, time really has flown by. And to commemorate, How Publishing Really Works has posted my "tale" of how I got published. I thought I'd tell it a little differently this time (I wrote it a few months ago...):
1. The girl reads everything. She reads books through every meal. She finishes the entire section in the library for 8 year olds and moves on. One day, she thinks, she will hold a book with her name on it.
2. The girl doesn’t find her English classes very inspiring, but she loves maths. She gets steered by her teachers towards science and away from literature, and ends up studying maths and physics and University. But words are her medium, not bunsen burners. She writes for the University newspaper and then discovers there is such a thing as a science journalist. Ah, she thinks.
3. She studies philosophy of science, then a diploma in journalism, and moves to Israel, where she interviews excited inventors and scientists for American and British magazines for over a decade. But a little voice in her head is saying “You’re reporting on their creativity. Where’s yours? Where’s yours?”
....
I am very very lucky that, two years later, my book - which has just had its 15th print run - is still getting reviews, not something I ever dreamed of when I dreamt of having a book. There are so many amazing things that have happened over the past 24 months that I would never have dreamed of! Alison Wells and Jim Murdoch have shared their thoughts on their blogs recently, Jim's is almost an essay rather than a review, with footnotes. I am very grateful to them both for taking the time to think about and then write about my stories. A writer cannot ask for more!
I have just finished reading Kasia Boddy's excellent The American Short Story Since 1950, and will write more abuot that on the Short Review blog soon. There's so much in there, I felt like I learned an enormous amount about the history of the short story, and it is filled with wonderful quotes from many writers about the form. I met Kasia when she interviewed Lydia Davis at the London Review Bookshop a few weeks ago - a thrilling night it was! I am delighted that Lydia agreed to be interviewed for the Short Review and sent me her answers to my questions yesterday. Now I need to review her 250-story Collected Stories, a mammoth task! I've read it through once already, there is so much in there to delight and provoke. Highly recommended!
