Hooping

No, this is not some new literary term like "foreshadowing", neither does it refer to a cough. Yes, I am currently at a writing workshop in the US, but I want to talk today about something else: hula hoops. First, drop the "hula". Apparently this is a trade name. Second, I bought a hoop in England a few weeks ago, a serious hoop that comes apart into 6 sections for eash travel, a hoop that comes with a DVD. I bought it because I fully believed the hype that it can banish the spare tyres accumulating around my waist. It took me a while to master, but I can now do about 5 minutes of straight hooping.

I thought I was doing well.

Then tonight, at the post-author-reading drinks, I meet a serious hooper (as they are known), and she clues me in to the big world of hooping and the people who hoop as if their life depends on it. She sends me to Hooping.org and here I read about Jonathan Livingston Baxter who "hoops for 90 minutes to two hours daily.". Ok, now I feel a little inadequate. Why does he do this? He says:

"about four and a half years ago, I broke my collarbone, and in an effort to heal from this injury I began a daily hoop practice. It has changed my life in so many ways, I still cannot grasp its full impact on me. But I do know that one of the first and most profound aspects of my life that hooping has changed is the way I handle depression. Before hooping, I used to allow depression to pull me down and keep me down for months. These days, through my daily practice, I'm able to limit bouts of depression to days or even hours. It's as if I have built up my emotional white-blood-cell count; I have both more immunity to the disease of depression, and more strength to fight the disease if it does creep in. Ultimately, my entire view of life has changed from feeling cursed to feeling blessed."

It is pretty well accepted that exercise boost positivity and combats depression. But I have to say, I think there is something more than that with a hoop. It is a reminder of childhood, and reminder of the time when we were unfettered with bills and jobs and anxieities about relationships and futures. When you're hooping you have to concentrate only on keeping that damn hoop up.... you can't start wandering off into thoughts about what you need to buy or who you need to phone, or the hoop just drops. The hoop keeps you in the moment, it's - I think - a form of meditation. And it's portable, you can do it alone or in groups, and it doesn't cost a thing - once you have the hoop (which you can make yourself: see Hoopmaking).

I didn't bring my hoop-which-comes-in-six-pieces with me to the workshop, silly me I thought I'd be discussing literature. But there are hoops here, newly made hoops, and I am looking forward to tomorrow morning's whirl. I need to work upwards from 5 mins, those spare tyres are still rather inflated. But I am really excited about this. Now that I know it's not just me... maybe I'll find a Hoop group. Join me! Together we can change the world!

Further NY musings

I think perhaps I was too harsh yesterday. Today we moved into apartment number 2 in the Upper West side, and I really like this neighbourhood. It's quieter than where we were behind Lincoln Center, although that was a fab location. But here it feels more like a community, has more character, more small shops. I am sitting and surfing in a little pavement (sidewalk!) espresso bar with free WiFi and jazz playing. Gorgeous! And we had a lovely day in Brooklyn the other day, it's great over there, those brownstones are stunning, I could definitely swap apartments there sometime, if anyone out there wants to hang out with our cats in Jerusalem!

So, NY, all is forgiven for right now. Off to writing workshop in portland, oregon, on Sunday, will report from there. Everyone says Portland is lovely, and has the biggest bookstore in the world. Temptation, temptation.

Musings from New York

New York used to thrill me. When I found out we were going to swap apartments with a friend of my cousin's on 67th and West End, (behind Lincoln Center)I didn't sleep all that night, I was so excited. But now we're here, the thrill has gone. The city is full of things that are familiar to me - The Gap, Starbucks, Borders books, you can find them all over the world. The streets, the fire hydrants, the metal fire escapes, I know them so well from Law&Order, from NYPD Blue, from all the other American shows I watch. The American accents are the same as those I hear around me in Jerusalem. Basically, it's not new, and it's not exotic. It's actually a little boring.

This also may be because since I was last here a few years ago, I have learned how to thrill myself. No sniggering, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about writing. I'm talking about the buzz I get, the enormous high, from spending an hour completely focused on writing a short story, or on editing a story to make it better. Nothing beats that all-body sensation, that utter satisfaction of the truly creative act, part meditation, part inspiration, part dedication. No wonder New York doesn't do it for me anymore - I have a portable thrill-generator that I can take anywhere. Me. Can't get any better than that.

magazines that make me happy

Ok, so I can't write right now. I haven't really been able to write anything since the news about my collection. V says that's normal. I don't call it writer's block. I'm not fighting it. I left the house a few hours ago with my laptop, thinking that I might try something. But then I found my letterbox full of goodies... and that was the end of that!

Here's what I got (not in order of preference):

Bravissimo's latest catalogue: bras, bras and more! This is heaven for the, err, more well-endowed of us who were fed up of heavy-duty scaffolding underwear. Lovely colours, all sorts of styles, tops with built in bras - even a raincoat customized to your bra size. Ahhhhhh, makes me very happy.

Bomb magazine: I entered this mag's short story comp and for my entry fee got a year's subscription. My first issue - Issue 100 - landed in the post box today, and what a beautiful looking mag it is. Lots of stunning artwork, articles about artists interviewed by artists, and a literary supplement with short stories and poems. I read a short short, very quirky, not at all what I would call "typical American short fiction", which thrills me! I am saving the rest of it for the 'plane ride on Monday to NY.

Seed magazine: So, if the first two speak to my shopping and literary sides, Seed talks to the scientist in me. But it's no ordinary science magazine, it's attempting hip & cool science and I think it's doing very well. Features on Roboethics, the meaning of life ( no less) and a review of the Museum of Time in France. Will be saving this for the plane, too.

dream comes true

I can't quite even believe I am writing these words but here goes (deep breath): my first short story collection is going to be published in 2008.

There it is.

The amazing short-story-loving folk at Salt Publishing have been so astonishingly kind as to add me to their Authors' list. I found out last week and went into shock. How do you react when something you've wanted for 30 years, almost since you learned to write, is suddenly offered to you? Numbness. That's the first reaction. Then a grin which takes over your face for hours. A line that keeps going round and round in your head "My first short story collection..." "My first book..."


On the 'plane back from England on Monday, I watched the film Miss Potter, and when Beatrix Potter sees her first book in the bookshop, a little display of just her book, I cried. I guess I am a little emotional right now. But that's ok. This is an emotional event. I am telling people slowly. How to say it? "I have news..." and they'll think I'm pregnant. Well this is definitely a sort of birth.

In writing terms, it seems to have changed everything for me. I feel as though I have been shown the ladder and allowed to step onto the first rung. I stopped working as a journalist about 8 months ago, and I started telling people that I am a writer. I took myself seriously, so others, it seem, are taking me seriously. And what does a writer do? A writer writes. And a writer publishes. I'm going to have a book! I'M GOING TO HAVE A BOOK!

Ok, back to earth. This also seems to have removed an enormous weight from my shoulders that I didn't realise was there. I am breathing out. I can do this thing. I think that was the weight. Can I? Can't I? And now that's gone. I can do it. I am doing it.

This also allows me to put a whole pile of stories (around 25 short and extremely short stories) into one collection and mark them as "done", so I can move forward to my next work. Next work?? Hmmm. I already have a few stories that I am working on. I guess I will just carry on. I have some ideas, have two films scripts to be tackling, and my short play. So I'll be getting on with it.

That's all for now. I'm still grinning. OK, back to work.

commended in 6 minute play comp

Well, I'd written this one off as a failure ages ago - but never speak too soon! I just discovered that I have been commended in a Six-Minute Play Competition! I adapted a short story of mine, The White Road, into a play just as an exercise, requiring me to change it quite a lot to fit into the demands of theatre. It was a really eye-opening thing to do, teaching me about structure, characters and story. I am so glad I did it. And being commended just shows me that some of what I did actually worked. Might send it somewhere else now. Ahhh, a good day.

reflections on Hay

Well, a few days after leaving the Hay Festival I have calmed down somewhat. Being there made me so agitated that I couldn't wait to leave.I was bitterly disappointed. Having read the program, I had worked myself up into great excitement about what I thought would be a truly literary event - a place for and by book-lovers, with publishers and books surrounding us and writers new and more experienced chatting with eager audiences. I imagined that in between the sessions I had booked for, I would find a quite corner to sit with my laptop and work on my own fiction, interrupted only by some friendly fellow book-lovers who wanted to chat about what we'd just seen and heard.

Wrong, wrong, WRONG.

What I found was a hideous artificial "city" of tents with barely a book in sight. Instead of stalls manned by small presses showing their wares, I found fudge, Penguin tea towels, and very expensive organic crisps. Books? Only in one tent and only those written by authors actually appearing at the Festival. The tents were draughty, seats uncomfortable, and much time was spent queuing (as the British love to do) to get in to the bloody events. As for the people, 80,000 people were attending over 10 days. That should have been warning enough. And they seemed to all be middle-class Londoners concerned more with celeb-spotting than with literature. Everyone was rather snooty, no-one talked to you or even looked you in the eye. The session I went to with three young novelists was embarassingly poorly-attending; people flocked to see celeb historian Simon Schama, but were uninterested in today's fresh new voices.

While I applaud the "green" focus on much of the festival, with a stall given over to SolarAid, a worthy environmental charity, it seemed at odds with the enormous pressure to "head over to the bookshop after the event, buy the latest hardback book by the author you've just heard, and get it signed". Recycled paper? Nope.

And what of the delightful little town of Hay-on-Wye with its 40 second-hand bookshops? Swamped by invading hordes, covering every inch of the little pavements, queuing outside cafes. But not buying books, it seems, according to the locals. Our hostess in the B&B we stayed in (the higlight of the trip - check it out - Ty Mynydd) said that the Festival used to be held in the local school and there was a lovely atmosphere. Now it's a separate "festival tent city" on the outskirts, bringing in its own traffic lights and using surrounding fields for parking (for a fee).

Ah well. High expectations, and they were all dashed. I was dying to leave. I'd had a lovely time at other Lit Fests such as Cheltenham and Bath, and assumed this would be the same, but alas, no. No more Hay for me. Next year, perhaps the Port Eliot Lit Fest or Small Wonder, the short story festival in Sussex. Or maybe I'll just stay home and read a book. Or, better still, write one.

Making Hay

Well, here I am at the Hay Festival. We arrived in pouring rain yesterday evening and I quickly realised that packing flip-flops was misguided. This morning I am wearing almost all the clothes I brought with me! Luckily, it's far less damp.

My first impressions are that it's quite a strange atmosphere - literary London, it seems, transplanted to a small town in Wales with 40 second-hand bookshops. Incongruous. Lots of trying to spot celebs, and much Fair Trade organic coffee. I haven't got far past the first impressions yet. More soon.

short shorts

Now, I could be referring in the title of this blog to something a friend mentioned yesterday that had caused her great embarassment when her father wore them to pick her up from school in the 1970s, that great fashion era. But actually I am talking about Slingink's 140-word short story competition. My story, Sorry, is one of the finalists and will be published in the competition's print anthology. I love flash fiction, the shorter the better in my opinion (as opposed to the short trousers, which can be too skimpy, I believe). This short story actually came from a longer piece of writing that I wrote during one of the sessions I have regularly with writing friends around the world. At a set time, we all sit down and write for 45 minutes based on a prompt or set of prompts that one of us has sent out. Then we spend a few minutes looking over what we have written, and we send it out. It's a powerful thing, to write simultaneously with someone, even if they're not in the same country. I feel the joint creative energies flowing. And the short, sharp writing time and the prompts tend to bring forth some bizarre stories.

So these 140 words were towards the end of a story probably around 700 words in length. I looked at them and thought, Hmm, this seems quite self-contained. I am delighted that the judge of this comp also found them to be so. But my point is that a writing exercise is often useful not for all the words it stimulates, but for perhaps just a small section, a little jewel which can be extracted and polished. I am not sure I will ever do anything with the rest of the piece, but it seems to me that it has already served its purpose. It got me to that 140 words and I won't lament the loss of the other 600 words. They were vital, but not for actual publication. Sometimes we have to recognize what to shave off a story, and in this case it was 75 per cent of the writing that had to go. This is a good lesson to learn - it's just as important to know what to let go as it is to know what to save.

Follow-up and new design

First, how's the new blog design? I re-did it to match my website's colour scheme. Is it unreadable? Do tell me if it is.

Second, a follow-up on my previous post, which generated some arguments as to whether Miranda July's method of promoting her short story collection was productive and informative. Here's New York magazine's interview with July, in case you were curious as to who she is and what people think of her. She seems to inspire rather strong reactions, but the stories definitely sound interesting!

As for me, I was Commended in a micro-fiction competition, found out today that one of my submissions got lost in cyberspace, and am waiting for all my writing groups' reactions to the new story I recently finished. On that note I wanted to draw attention to this absolutely excellent article by the wonderfully-named Ann Pancake in Poets and Writers magazine: Reading How You're Read - The Art of Evaluating Criticism. Ann's aim is to help writers deal with the critique we receive in writing groups, workshops etc.. As she says:

With your poem, short story, essay, or book manuscript back in your hands, the first thing you'll probably do is scan the feedback as quickly as possible with the secret hope that your critics have deemed the piece perfect. But once you see this is not the case—and before you can productively sort through the comments—you have to perform a balancing act that may be the most difficult step of the evaluation process. You must suspend enough of your ego to become somewhat objective while holding on to enough of it so that you don't sacrifice your vision.

For me, this is incredibly useful advice. Having just given my precious new baby to all my writing groups, I have to make sure that their comments don't interfere with the way I see the story, that I don't submit to what may be their visions of how they would write it.

you have to have a fairly strong sense of your vision for the work. This is why it is important to avoid exposing your writing to criticism until you have a solid grasp of what you're trying to achieve.

I think I am ready for this, but if it turns out I have given the story out prematurely, I will just sit on the critique and not look at it for a while. This is a great and helpful article, highly recommended.

Now this is how....

.... to publicize your short story collection.

Noonebelongsheremorethanyou.Com

A New Story

I've just finished a new story. It's not a flash piece, which can almost write itself in one sitting. This is a story of two thousand or so words. It was slow in emerging, I wrote it in 500-word instalments, weeks going by in between, because I didn't know what the story was and I didn't want to push it. I let go into the uncertainty and waited until it came, until it was ready. And it was a joy, letting myself be guided by the process, not worrying about how it would end, how it might sound, whether the characters were working. I was inside it and enjoying it, loving the newness of my characters, and loving the glimpse I was getting of their lives.

I started the story twice. The first time I wrote 1500 words but didn't feel I was getting even near the action. I was telling the story in the first person, as theMain Character, now an adult, looked back on her childhood. It didn't work for me.

So I waited. And then it came to me, and I started again. In the third person, and in the present tense, right in the middle of the action. This time it worked.

I want to stress that "finished" doesn't mean it's ready for anything. All it means in this context is that I know I have come to the end of the story. Now I have my first draft. The creative part is over. Now the hard slog begins: the stepping back and trying to read it as if it wasn't mine, without a deep and abiding love for my main character. I have help in this endeavour: my invaluable and generous writing groups. I am looking forward to getting it out there and letting them pull it to pieces. Bring it on!

I am calm. This is my meditation. I forget this, and when a week or so goes by and I haven't written, I am crabby, I snap at J, my insides are tense. Why don't I just do what I know I need to do? Ah well. Maybe because when it comes it is even greater for the build-up.


PS got two rejections tonight, adding to two non-placings in competitions this week. But somehow I am not devastated. Maybe because I finished a story today. I guess when you know you can keep doing it, it makes everything feel a little better. For now, at least.

Vanessa and Salt

A huge and enormous congrats to my great friend and writing buddy Vanessa Gebbie on the fabulous news that Salt Publishing have had the good sense to choose her collection as one of the short story collections they will publish in 2008. Can't wait to see it in print, V!

Yes, this means you are a grown-up. It's not all bad, eh?

And now for something about me

After a pretty depressing few weeks of "no thanks" from fiction's all and sundry, I have had rather a nice few days. First, my story, Space Fright, is published in the latest issue of the Steel City Review.

Second, I received an Honorable Mention in the Abroad Writers' Conferences 2007 short story contest. I feel highly honorable to have been mentioned. (They awarded one first prize and five 2nd prizes, which seems rather original to me!)

Third... I heard today that I've been shortlisted for the People's College short story competition. The story that was shortlisted has been the bane of my life for over a year - I have written perhaps twenty different versions, changing the tense, the point of view, where the story started, where it ended, what happened in the middle. It made me crazy! Nice to know that the judge somewhat liked it - even if it doesn't get any further, this is a great affirmation.

Please remind me of all of the above when I write my next blog post whinging about rejections and why, why, why do I put myself through it. THIS is why I put myself through it. You don't get the highs without the lows, and without the lows the highs would just be floating aimlessly somewhere around waist-height.

Relativity.

Ponder that one.

congrats to Julian Gough

Huge congratulations to Julian Gough, the winner of this year's National Short Story Prize with his story The Orphan and the Mob (which is still available on the BBC Afternoon Reading site, until tomorrow, I believe)! I laughed out loud listening to it - and that very rarely happens to me! You can read it in Prospect Magazine too.

I feel very honoured that Julian popped into my blog last week to correct some of my misconceptions about the shortlist. I had slammed it as being full of already-well-known writers, and I am very grateful to him for pointing out that he, in fact, has had only one novel published, in 2001, and, as he says,

one small literary novel published six years ago doesn't get you stopped in the street very often. Or, indeed, ever.

Read his comments about the competition process and what it was like to have his story cut by the BBC for broadcast here. Well done, Julian - more power to the short story - and don't spend all that £15,000 at once!

Six little things: perfect flash fiction

It's time for a little positivity and praise - I just read the latest issue of Six Little Things , a publication for prose poems and the short-short story, and was simply stunned by the gloriousness of the six short but sumptuous pieces of writing on the theme of Mortal Enemies.

I am in love with flash fiction. It has got to a point where not only can I not read most novels, I am bored within a paragraph by most short stories. Short-shorts and prose poems are what give me the shot I need, the slap in the face, the splash of ice water. Surely the MTV generation (is that an outdated term now? Should it be the iPod/MySpace/YouTube generation) with its teeny attention span would love this art form? Why is it not everywhere? Maybe I will start a movement. Watch this (my)space.

And to follow up... a little censorship

This is a fascinating new development related to the National Short Story Prize:

BBC accused of censorship after cancelling short story broadcast

Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Tuesday April 17, 2007
The Guardian

The author Hanif Kureishi accused the BBC of censorship last night, after it dropped a radio broadcast of his short story describing the work of a cameraman who films the executions of western captives in Iraq. Radio 4 cancelled a reading of Weddings and Beheadings, one of five nominations for the National Short Story prize due to be broadcast this week, after concluding the timing "would not be right" following unconfirmed reports that kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston had been killed by a jihadist group. Kureishi, whose work includes The Buddha of Surburbia, Intimacy and the screenplay for the film My Beautiful Launderette, said he was angry at the decision, which he described as a result of "stupid thinking" on the part of BBC executives. "It seems to me that as a journalist, he would be against censorship," he said of Johnston, who has been missing for more than a month and for whom fears intensified on Sunday when a previously unknown group, the Palestinian Brigades of Monotheism and Holy War, claimed to have killed him. Kureishi said: "There are journalists and newspapers in peril all the time around the world. We support them by supporting freedom of speech rather than by censoring ourselves."

The short story, nominated for the £15,000 prize run by Prospect magazine, describes the work of a camerman who has been forced to take on work filming the executions that have become a feature of recent kidnaps in the Middle East. The BBC said it would have pulled the programme regardless of whether or not Johnston worked for the BBC or was a journalist. "An important criterion when deciding whether to transmit a particular story on a difficult subject is the timing of the transmission . We do not now feel that it would be right to broadcast at the moment. We will review this on a regular basis," it said. But Kureishi said it was important to uphold the principle of free speech: "It's not trivial or silly. It's an attempt to say something. It all seems rather arbitrary."

Personally, I think this is outrageous. If the Beeb are worried about offending their listeners, add in a warning before the story. But you can't turn around and tell one of the 5 shortlisted entries that they alone will not be broadcast, regardless of the subject matter.

I wonder what will happen next.

National Short Story Prize

Well, the shortlist for the "most lucractive short story prize" has been announced:

• 'Slog's Dad' by David Almond
• 'The Morena' by Jonathan Falla
• 'The Orphan and the Mob' by Julian Gough
• 'How to Get Away with Suicide' by Jackie Kay
• 'Weddings and Beheadings' by Hanif Kureishi

So, once again (this is its second year) not only am I not on the shortlist (big surprise) they are all well-known writers. Also, strangely, I noticed when I googled them all that they are all published by Random House. Is this a bizarre coincidence? I have no idea. Far be it from me to start spreading wild conspiracy theories

I will just say one thing: I don't understand a competition that doesn't judge blindly. How is it in anyone's interest for the judges to know whose work they are reading? Surely a story should stand or fall on its own merit? Am I wrong? Am I just bitter? Well, a little - but I think this should apply to the Man Booker prize, too, for example. A big name should make absolutely no difference - otherwise how are the little people ever going to make it big? Reading a book by a well-known author, you begin with a set of expectations that have very little to do with the writing. You can go wrong, I feel, when you judge non-blindly, but how can you go wrong by judging blindly? The best work will shine through, no?

1st Quarter: Taking stock

It seems to me, as the first quarter of the year has passed, that it is time to take stock. How has the year been so far, in figures( as recorded on our WritingStats2007 blog)?

Well:

I have submitted 94 stories to various places. These are not 94 different and unique stories, often it is the same stories sent to different places, either simultaneously or resubmitting them elsewhere when they are rejected. Here's a rough breakdown of where I sent them: 68 entries to story competitions, 1 entry to a 6-minute play competition, 1 entry to a film script comp, 22 stories submitted to open calls for submissions (not competitions), and 2 stories recorded as audio files for an Australian magazine that is producing an issue on CD.

The good news is: 8 hits, which means that either a story has been accepted for publication or it has made it to a significant place in a competition. So: 3 stories accepted for publication, and I won 2nd prize in a flash fiction competition and made 2 shortlists and 2 longlists.

The not-so-good news is that I have received 26 rejections - 16 from competitions, 2 from print magazines, 2 from online magazines and 6 from flash fiction publications.

Financial the picture is thus: Spent £ 326, earned £100 (prize money). So I am in the red to the tune of £226.

When I look at it all like this I wonder why on earth I am sending out SO many stories. What am I trying to prove by this? Does it satisfy me in some way? The rejections hurt less when you know there are still 70 possibles out there that might come through. But is it worth it? I seem to always be holding out for the next competition result, the next deadline.

Looking at the 1st Quarter from another angle, it has been extremely productive. Through the WriteWords group's Flash Fiction challenges I have written 14 new and oftentimes bizarre flash stories. The other online writing group I belong to, the Fiction Workhouse, has provided me with wonderful critique on two stories so far, and I have learned from critiquing others' work, as well as enjoying having a forum for celebrating acceptances and group commiseration on rejections.

I have a wonderful writing group here in Israel which gives me so much support, it really keeps me going, as well as helping me immensely with my writing. And I have just founded a new short story group here in Jerusalem which is a little slow to get off the ground but I have high hopes!

So, should this be enough for me? I keep thinking about halting my submissions and not sending off anything else. But I just can't quite do it. Why don't I wait until I have a story I absolutely adore, and which I think is pretty much there, and then send it off? I feel a little like I am racing towards something. Is this a throwback from journalism days when I needed deadlines? I imagine feeling quite lost without "somewhere" to send something to. But perhaps that is part of the writing life. Writing is about writing. Sometimes it's very hard to remember that. And very hard to just do it.

Ideas Above Our Station at WH Smith

A bit of nice news: Route's latest anthology, Ideas Above Our Station, which includes my short story, On A Roll, will be part of an Easter promotion at the major UK chain WH Smith's Travel stores at airports and railways stations. It's a 3 for 2 promotion which runs for two weeks from March 31st - so all of you in the UK, or travelling through, when you pop in to buy those two books you've been wanting, why not grab a copy of Ideas Above Our Station too?

Thank you.

If it doesn't work on paper... how about the Big Screen?

I have had a very interesting day. I was at one of my writing groups last night and they were critiquing the story I had given them, when someone said, This would make a great film. Ker-ching! Something clicked in my head. Yes it would, I thought to myself. Maybe that's why i can't get it right on paper. The story involves quite a lot of technical details about making bizarre-looking cakes. I kept re-reading these sections and thinking, Gosh this is boring, but yet it's essential. I couldn't get past this feeling.

So today, in about two hours, I sat and re-wrote the story as a film. Well, I've done the first ten pages and a synopsis. I've adapted a short story into a radio play before, and that was a wonderful process. But the visual aspect of a film, now this is a whole different cluster of felt tips, as they say. I could see it in my head - I can generally picture what I write in my head, but this just felt filmic, somehow. And I loved being able to just give directions for something without having to explain it at great length in the main character's voice-over. A picture is worth many hundred words.

What's the rush? Well, there is a scriptwriting competition for fledglings such as myself, so I did it, all in the correct script format, which took rather longer than writing the thing. And then I submitted it online. We'll see. If I win I get a load of script consultancy and some cash.

I won't win. But this is a great exercise in trying a story in a different form. Paper may not always be the correct media. And it's so refreshing to try something new for a change!

To cut a long story short

So the Guardian is weighing in on the subject of brevity now. They've asked well-known writers (mostly novelists) to attempt an Ernest Hemingway and write a story in 6 words. Some of the results are rather lovely (Ali Smith, of course, and Helen Fielding), some are a bit like some strange code where many words are missed out, (Jeffrey Eugenides).

I am wondering whether I appreciate this focus on the short form or whether by skipping straight from novels to a frankly ridiculous six-worder, which is not really a story in my opinion, The Guardian is rather taking the piss. I sway between the two: on the one hand, this is a welcome but extreme demonstration of how every word must count, but on the other hand, six-word-stories are not exactly a commercially viable form. Why not ask all these same novelists to cut their longest novel down to a short story or even flash fiction? Now there would be an interesting exercise in cutting away the fat!

congratulations to Vanessa

Big big big congratulations to Vanessa on winning 2nd prize in the Fish International Short Story Competition, one of the major prizes in the short fiction world. Well done, V, we're very proud!

Snow and sunburn

A small observation: four days ago, walking around Jerusalem, I got sunburned. Today I wake up and snow is falling.




?????

Answers on a postcard, please.

writing and rewriting

I have been very inspired and enlightened by Kay Sexton's fascinating blog post Rushing to Judgement and the comments from other writers and Kay's responses. I had never before considered the fact that "creating" a story and then revising/working on that story require two different parts of the brain. Kay even suggests writers don't both create and revise in the same physical location, because if you are in "revising" mode when you are creating or vice versa, this can cause trouble.

Wow. That really spoke to me. I was aware, as a journalist, that writing journalistic articles uses a completely different part of my brain than fiction-writing. I even went as far as to buy a second computer, a little laptop, dedicated purely to fiction-writing, just to keep the two worlds separate. But I had never looked at the fiction-writing process as being split into two. I had always sat down at my laptop, whether at home or in a cafe, and perhaps done a little creating of something new and then a little revising of some works-in-progress.

But when I am creating, I enter into that zone where I am completely focussed on what I am doing and my critical faculties are switched off, I am somehow letting the work come through me, listening to my characters speak and letting them tell me what the story is. It's partly meditative, and partly who-knows-what, that magical state when you aren't trying to write, you are simply opening yourself up to the flow.

But obviously - well, obvious now that Kay has drawn my attention to it - this state is absolutely no good at all for revising. if my critical faculties are off, or at least subdued, how can I look at my work with a critical eye? The ideal, I believe, is to be able to read your work dispassionately, as if it was someone else's, and critique it. Generally I am feeling kind of blurry and swept away after creating for an hour or so, how can I then revise, even if it's something else?

So, the other day I put this to the test and sat down with a couple of works-in-progress with my Revising Brain switched on. And it was great. I got so much done, because I was in the right space to analyse what I'd written and be pretty ruthless.

I am still a little nervous, though. I haven't written anything new since that day, and I am a bit worried that I won't be able to get back into Creative Mode. Completely irrational fear, i know. I just have to be a little organised in advance and plan what I am going to do in a particular session. Planning is not my best trait.

This fiction writing, this is hard work!

What a week! Another shortlisting

Well, dear blog readers, I could get used to this. My flash story was shortlisted for the Biscuit Flash Fiction prize. It didn't win, but as I waffled on about yesterday, a shortlisting is a great affirmation. Thanks, Biscuit! And congrats to the winner, Jacqui Winn, an Australian writer who I see from a quick Google search has received many awards. I look forward to reading her story. She has a great name - perhaps I should change mine to Titania NumberOne!

What a week.....

A long listing... what does that say?

A new-ish story of mine, Garden Baby, made it to the longlist of the Happenstance Short Story Comp. Out of 170 entries, I got into the last 31. But don't get excited - they already announced the shortlist and Garden Baby didn't make it that far.

It's interesting, a longlisting. What does it mean, making it through the first round? Well, it means they didn't read the first paragraph and throw it down in disgust, or yawn and look around for something more interesting. I think it means they read it all the way through, and maybe even for a second time.

And then they thought about it for a while.

And then when they had to decide, they didn't shift it to the smaller pile because...

1) They didn't feel completely drawn in by the story
2) The characters weren't well rounded enough
3) The plot was not quite there
4) The ending missed the mark and they were confused/frustrated/disbelieving

It could be any or all of these things. And what it means is that I need to take a long hard look at this story, not necessarily tomorrow but maybe in a few weeks, and prod it and poke it and see what gives.

I am lucky, my wonderful writing groups have given me great feedback on Garden Baby (including the title, which a few found misleading!). I received some very thought-provoking comments on the story last week. So I have what to go on. Doing it alone is hard - it is damn difficult to step back from your own story and try and critique it with fresh, objective eyes.

Maybe that's what a longlisting means: take a long look and put in the work.

And a short listing means: it'd only take a short time to turn this into a winner.

I have a story that's been shortlisted twice now. But the wonderful thing is that it's not a case of always a bridesmaid, never a bride with writing: I believe that if I put in the work then my story can make it to the altar, will be the one wearing the white pouffy dress. This business is a little bit about luck, but mostly about hard work. And I'm up to the task. Tomorrow is a new day!

Shortlisting & new (unpaid) job

Well, it seems that when I despair, something comes to lift me up. My story has been short-listed for the Philip Good Memorial short story competition. That news is pretty much enough to buoy me along for a week or so. The results will be announced in a few days, but the fact that it got this far is enough for me. I also wrote a quick flash story today which made me laugh, and that also made me happy. What a joy, to be able to make yourself chuckle, eh?

Thank you to the Writing Deities!

I am also giving a little back - I've just been accepted as a reader for a flash fiction publication. That means they'll be sending me a bunch of submitted stories each week and trusting my opinion about which are worth publishing. I feel a heavy weight on my shoulders. I hope I am up to it. But I believe that being on both sides of the divide will be good for me - I learn a great deal from reading other people's writing. And I love flash. I won't mention the name of the publication because I am not - I repeat, not - open to bribery.

Not even banana waffles with caramel....

Antsy

It's a great word, antsy - an American word, I believe, maybe coming from "ants in your pants" - one that exactly describes my condition. I fidget, I can't rest, can't relax, and right now I can't write anything. Everything I look at that I've started makes me squirm. I hate it. Did I write that? I'm crap. Yes, I've written good stuff in the past, but maybe that was it? I'm not depressed, I'm just... well, antsy. So I thought I would get the fingers moving here instead.

I am in a Chocolate Bar. No, not actually inside one, but sitting in the Max Brenner cafe at the Tel Aviv port whose theme is Chocolate. I decided after sitting in another cafe without any reduction in antsi-ness that chocolate was the thing. So I came here, had a waffle with banana, caramel, dark chocolate icecream and hot chocolate sauce. There are no words to describe it. Try one.

I feel much much better. Still antsy, though.

Let's talk about writing. I realised during the two weeks of flu-related malaise when I couldn't write that I had become rather obsessed with submitting. Submitting and getting accepted. The rejections were really hitting me hard because I wasn't writing. I was just submitting, and so everything stood and fell on those submissions. But submitting doth not a writer make. Writing is what counts, even if no-one sees it. So, assisted by J, I came up with a plan: submit stuff to several months' worth of competitions and deadlines all in one go, rather than on a daily basis. Then put them out of my mind.

That was the theory.

In practice I sent a load of subs in over the last few days (which is a very expensive business when competitions are concerned) but am still checking to see if competition results have been posted etc...Which is stupid because generally, if you win or get close, they email you. You don't generally find out about it on the website.

So, I need to calm down. I need to write.

In the meantime, I am reading. What I am reading right now is Under the Dam, a collection of stories by David Constantine which is absolutely fabulous. He is a poet, novelist, translator, short story writer... ah, one of those multi-talented people! But you can immediately hear from his stories that he is a poet and I feel that I have learned a lot from reading. His stories often seem to be written in a slightly old-fashioned language, with words sometimes set down in the "wrong" order so that you have to re-read a sentence just to check what it means. His language flows, he uses repetition to wondrous effect, and he creates gorgeous images. He plunges straight into the stories without a preamble. A few first lines:

Nobody noticed. Apparently they never do.

and

"That horse makes me nervous," Judith said.

and

When Mrs Mercer came in she found her husband looking poorly.

Those are from some of the stories I have read so far. Each story is located in a different place, different city, country - we move from Manhattan to Singapore, Scotland, Paris, a glacier in Italy. But I didn't wonder whether Constantine had been to these places, knew them well, as a certain Guardian journalist seemed overly concerned with last week (see Kay Sexton's blog rant on his comments). I was swept up in the stories.

Reading good stories makes me want to write. To write good stories. Not in imitation - although it is always tempting to try and analyse what works for one writer and then have a bash at it yourself. But eventually I always come back to the way I do things. Coz, frankly, I am not good at not being my kind of writer. I hope the antsi-ness will leave me soon and I can get down to something. I thought it would be the other way round but that's not working right now.

Ah, maybe a little more chocolate??

Feeling groovy

Well, no, I am not exactly feeling groovy yet, in fact it has taken me a long time to bounce back from whatever sent my temperature sky-high ten days ago. What is the specific complaint? A kind of non-specific malaise, feeling a sense of dis-ease, achey, bleuch. That's it. But while that's around I find it hard to write, to read, to do much of any value to mankind, or to my fellow writers whose work I am supposed to be critiquing. Sorry. I have just meditated and right now feel a healthy glow. Let's hope it lasts so real life can resume.

Just found out that my story that was long-listed for a competition didn't struggle through to the short list. But V's did, congratulations! Onwards and upwards. Waiting on results from a couple of flash competitions. I think I do better under 500 words. I am brevity. I haven't got much staying power. Not right now.


J and I are off tonight to a performance by a great Israeli singer, David Broza, together with a dance troupe that are the Israeli version of Stomp. Lots of banging stuff, I expect. I hope it doesn't set me back. I hope it gives me my zing back.

Happy birthday, B!

A very important debate

Today my blog is brought to you by someone else's blog. Namely, Vanessa, who has posted on a topic of great import to writers: Do we write for the market or for ourselves? Instead of writing about how I feel about that here, I have commented (in a comment longer than many of my recent short stories!) and I urge you all to head over there and say your piece.

Thank you.

LIttle funny thing

I just discovered that there is a picture of me on the opening page about the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa!


I look like a real student, don't it? (I'm on the right in the khakhi green cardigan). I believe that was a short story writing module taught by Tessa Hadley. That was back in 2003-04. Ah, what a long way we have come since! I have got slightly less baggy jumpers and get my hair cut slightly more often.

Ooo, embarassing.

Delirium, congrats and crunchies

Well, my body is saying STOP, and so I let its temperature rise to over 101, only panicking slightly because J is away and the cats couldn't call an aambulance (badly trained, eh?). A bad night, but now all is better, mostly, or cooler at least. Still wobbly, but managing to watch much television (not on the actual TV, if you know what I mean). I am researching for my Mastermind specialist subject "The life and times of Meredith Grey and the rest of the cast of Grey's Anatomy". Go on, ask me anything, anything at all -except about Season 2 episodes 11-27, which I have to go and get from the video shop when i'm less wobbly (yes, alright, I watched the new episodes of Season 3, then Season 1 and now am filling in the gaps with Season 2. It's not so bad, knowing what happens in the end. It's so well-written!)

alright, i'm obviously delirious.

Phooey to all that, but congrats to MBR whose first work of fiction, the fabulously gripping Collaborator of Bethlehem, has just hit the shelves. No, it's not chick lit.It's a hard-hitting mystery with a Palestinian amateur detective trying to help out a friend. Dan Brown, watch out behind you. What fun to have friends with books! Please god by us all, I say.

OK, I could waffle on and on, but look at the time! More rubbish to watch. I've seen three episodes of You Are What You Eat: Gillian Moves In which has served to make me feel very smug about how much raw fruit and veg I eat and how few cream cakes and chips. Ooh, but I'd love a nice Crunchie bar.

Enough.

More when I surface.

Good start to Feb: a prize and a longlisting

I got some great news last week - I won 2nd place in Creating Reality's 300 word Flash Fiction competition! This is the comp that I won first place in last year... and I sent in three stories this year, not thinking my luck would hold. But they actually told me that all three stories made it to the final list - anonymously of course. Gosh, what a thrill, and a nice £100 too! Just about pays for all the submission fees to the competitions I have submitted to so far this year.

What's nice about this story, Mugs, is it is a much shortened version of a story I wrote several years ago. That story, in my mind, was supposed to be poignant, touching. But when I read it out then in my writing class, people cracked up laughing. I realise that there was a problem.

So a month or so ago, in my flash fever, I decided to take the opening para, which I really liked, and then rewrite it as a flash piece. It came out totally differently, which amazed and delighted me. So this is a great example of Rewriting (see blog post ).It's not up on their site yet, but should be soon.

Also, just heard today that my story has been long-listed for the Fish Short Story Prize . This list is like the first round short list, and then there will be a shorter short list, and then the winners. So this is a little achievement, but there's still a way to go. However, as Vanessa says, this shows that the story "has legs", it didn't bore the pants of the readers and make them throw it down in disgust.

Winner announced March 17th. Don't hold your breath.

William Trevor makes me cry

It is not often I even finish a story in the NewYorker these days, but this story , Bravado, by William Trevor, in the Jan 15th issue of the New Yorker, is just extraordinarily good.

I won't spoil it, but will just say that he has an astonishing talent for easing you into a story gently, circling around, without letting on who the main character is until half way through. His writing is so sure and every word so right that you feel utterly confident that it will all be tied together perfectly, and - generally - painfully.

While he appears to be describing ordinary people and an ordinary town, he also manages to insinuate an undercurrent of threat and un-ease. Perhaps this shouldn't suprise me, it is the small acts of violence that are often more shocking than the grandiose ones. And perhaps I automatically read these themes into the story because I know that Trevor is not a happy-endings kind of guy. But I think this story is worthy of discussion, apparently gentle, not employing fancy words or seemingly striving for any great moral, yet at the end I wanted to weep.


It's fifteen minutes later and I still want to weep.

That's talent.

Creativity, Einstein, Picasso and All is Not What We See

I went to a lecture last night at the science museum on Einstein and Picasso. Now I should preface this by saying that I have a real soft spot for Albert E. I have a large picture of him on the wall of my study saying,

Imagination is more important than knowledge

and am very fond of his relativity theories. When we studied them at uni, we were all so blown away by the implications that the lecturer had to stop every lecture half way through and tell jokes so that we could get our breaths back.

This lecture, by a guy from UCL who has written a book, Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc, was very inspiring to me. To cut a long story short, he is saying that Einstein was THE scientist of the 20th century and Picasso was THE artist, and they had their most creative periods at the same time, 1905-1907. And then he looked at the atmosphere in Europe at the time, the zeitgeist (yes, I can use that word because he did, ok?), and what people were talking about. Well, it was all about the nature of space and time, and so of course both Albert and Pablo picked up on these currents, both of them having a little band of fellow creative and deeply poor men (mostly men) with whom they hung out and chatted about philosophy and literature etc...

He showed how both Einstein and Picasso moved from Perception to Conception, which, I think, meant that they showed us that what you see isn't what you get. You might think that you are seeing two things happening simultaneously, but Einstein showed that there is no such thing as objective time so while for you these two things are happening at the same time, for someone else one event happens before the other.

And Picasso in 1907 unveiled a painting in which he painted several views of one of the women in the painting at the same time. So, if I understood, her face was both in profile and also face on to the viewer. He painted simultaneity, he warped our notion of space and time.

Alright, this is all getting a little lengthy, but I was inspired by how these guys (and let's extend it to women too) took what had come before and gave it a twist, looked at it in a new way. They didn't work in a void, they read and learned about new ideas, and then they applied them in a unique fashion. May we all be so creative.

I am Ubuntu

Do you notice anything different about me? Look closely. YES! I have switched to Linux! If you don't know what that means, then the rest of this post won't mean very much to you. I will attempt to explain. In a nutshell, I have shed Microsoft, waved bye bye to Windows, and gone Open Source. I have changed my operating system to Ubuntu, which is one of the many versions of the Linux free operating system. The word "Ubuntu" means something like

I am what I am because of who we all are

in Bantu. Nelson Mandela said it, or something.


Well, anyway, I finally got so fed up with Windows XP for various reasons and being sort of a techy I decided I had to make the move. So I migrated.

It feels good.

If only for the girly and superficial reason that Ubuntu's desktop colours are swirly chocolate
Nice, eh?

Things aren't quite as easy here as in Windows, but since I am mostly web-based, and for my writing all I really need is a good word processor, which Ubuntu comes with (OpenOffice), I should be OK.

Famous last words.

Any advice welcome.

Stranger than fiction

J and I went to see the film Stranger than Fiction yesterday. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's about a boring tax inspector who suddenly hears a woman narrating his life inside his head. He discovers that he is the main character in this writer's novel and that she (the superb Emma Thompson) is about to kill him off. As a writer, this was a really interesting conceit. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I actually found it a very moving idea, that one of my characters could actually come to life. How would I feel if I ran into one of them? Would I feel guilty about what I had done to them in my stories? Who are these people that we write about? I often wonder where the characters come from that pop into my head. Are they out there all the time and I just suddenly pick up their "signal" when I have tuned my brain to the right frequency? Or do I really conjure them up out of thin air? When, as I did on Thurs morning (thanks V & F!) I write an entire 1500 word short story, with a beginning, middle and end, and with at least four characters, where the hell did they come from? And now that they are out there, do they carry on with their lives when I am not writing them?

These questions may not be answerable, but I urge you to see the film. It has left me with so many thoughts about plot, about a writer's duty to her characters, to her readers, to herself. If you found out your main character was real, would you still kill him off?

Think about it.

traditional vs non-traditional

I have been mulling a lot over the distinction between "traditional" short stories and non-traditional ones, and trying to make some sense of the whole thing. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so this might not come out very clearly, but I will have a go anyway. Why don't I like the sort of short stories the NewYorker publishes? Because, with a few exceptions (George Saunders, Hariku Murakami) I don't consider them short stories but a whole other form: the short novel.

The short novel has all the elements you're familiar with from a novel: an opening paragraph or five which don't tell you much about what the story is going to be, lengthy descriptions of place, lots of "telling" not "showing", a meandering narrative with digressions all over the place, and an ending which is neither surprising nor satisfying. This is what I am calling a "traditional" story... but perhaps that is wrong, and I look forward to being argued with vehemently.


This is not, in my mind, what a short story is all about. A short story is its own form, it is not simply less words than a novel. It embraces the beauty of brevity, each word is a precious commodity, it conjures up a whole world in the blink of an eye, and it ends with an ending which doesn't not have you turning the page and wondering where the rest is. You know a good short story has ended, and while you may be sad not to be in that world anymore, you know that this ending was somehow inevitable. Perhaps this is the true traditional short story, but it has become the more "experimental" one.

So, that said, I have been wondering whether I should try and write a "traditional" story just to get it into the sorts of mainstream publications that probably wouldn't (and haven't to date) read past most of my first lines. But then I think to myself: If I wrote a story I didn't like much and it got published and noticed by those I want to notice (i.e. agents, editors), and then I show them the rest of my opus, bang goes that idea.

Anyway, just wanted to open a debate about all this. I read a story in another very well-known American mag yesterday (mentioning no names), and while the writer injected some magic and surrealism in there, I was skimming through paragraphs of lengthy description trying to get to the action. And the ending was SO predictable that I rued the time spent reading it. Why why why?


PS I have also noticed the demise of the hyphen. Words that should be hyphenated are left dangling, making no sense. Am I the only one who has spotted this? Is this a grammar revolt? How can I get hold of Lynn Truss?

New year, new web site

I am coming to realise that having a website is like having a wardrobe full of clothes: every now and then I look at it, think "Oh god, this is just not me any more" , and do a complete clear out and re-design. So that's what I've done, and, ta-da, here is the newly-redesigned, new concept site. Feedback appreciated - but just remember, I haven't quite finished the redesign. But broken link reports and "I can't read this font/colour/size!" comments very welcome.

Addendum No sooner had I posted the above post but my website went down. Not my fault! Technical difficulties somewhere, on some server. Keep trying!

Starting the Year with A Good Read & A Load of Submissions

My year started off well (yesterday actually) with a bumper crop of lit magazines and others arriving in the post.

Tin House

Paris Review

SEED - very cool science mag which has a Fiction contest

Poets & Writers - incredibly useful resource for writers

and - most importantly -

Isotope which I had been looking forward to receiving. It's A Journal of Literary Science and Nature Writing which has a fiction contest to which I have submitted one of my stories. My contest entry fee also entitled me to a year's subscription, and the first issue has arrived! I am dying to know what literary science and nature writing is... will keep you posted.

I was also inspired by my two acceptances last week to fire off a load of stories in various directions: the Lunch Hour flash fiction contest got 4 stories, online magazine Tattoo Highway got another, The Big Ugly Review received three stories for their theme "The Body", JBMB contest got a story.

We'll see if any of those get anywhere, but not stressed about it at all. Just looking forward to another year of STORY.


Happy New Year of Reading and Writing to all!

Love and Space Fright in Steel City

Well, a little more love from a couple of editors. Julia and Stefani are the co-editors of the Steel City Review a new lit journal published out of Pittsburgh, which to my scientific delight states that:

We are interested in publishing stories that explore techy, mechanical, dry and scientific issues by providing them with juicy plots and characters we'd like to chat with. Weare interested in stories featuring implements, code, machines, procedures, and expertise; academics and workers; masters and rebels.

I saw that and thought of another story which I wrote a few years ago but never found a place for (this one not a flash piece). So I sent them Space Fright four days ago, and today they emailed to say that they would "love to publish it" in the April issue. What a thrill. I hope that they realise how much it means to me to have an editor not only accept a story but to use the word "love". I will sleep sweetly tonight.

They also made my day by saying that they'd seen my stories on LabLit and the Entelechy Journal and are "honored" that I sent them my work. Blimey. It's quite a strange feeling, my writing is out there, people are seeing it in different places, looking at the name of the author, forming an impression about me. It's all new to me, all of this. But somehow everything seems to be falling into place.
A good way to start a new year.

Chemistry at Hiss Quarterly

Good news: just had a lovely email from the folks at Hiss Quarterly accepting my short short, Chemistry, for their next issue. Nothing better than a publication telling you they "love" your story. This is a flash piece I wrote years ago, had hanging around at the back of the drawer, never quite knowing what to do with it. Then I saw Hiss' call for subs on the subject of "Birds&Bees" and it felt like a fit.

Made my day.

Makes all those rejections worthwhile.

It'll be up there Feb 1st. Thanks, Hiss.

Snow!

It's snowing in Jerusalem.... only two days after Xmas. The entire city has come to a standstill over a few flakes. What fun!

back on track

It's a beautiful sunny day and, despite being woken rather earlier than I am used to by drilling right outside our house, I am in a great mood and feeling productive and creative again. I am attempting to adapt one of my short stories into a one-act play which will probably be around ten minutes long. I didn't know until I did a one-act play course a few months ago that there were such gems as ten-minute plays, the stage's version of short stories. Actually, I discovered an even shorter form: one-page plays, flash drama! What a joy!

Anyhow, adapting my story is a very interesting and enlightening process, trimming away the fat, so to speak - seeing what I can show and imply without directly telling the audience everything. The thought that actors might become the characters I have created is intoxicating - the flesh-and-blood realisation of my story. But whereas in the short story you have to put a certain amount down on the page, on the stage you can have silences, just movement. I worry: have I put in too few words or too many Will they know what the hell is going on? I've been thinking about what I would want to see as a member of the audience.

And also, as someone who has done quite a bit of acting in am-dram, I am trying not to force too much down the actors' throats but leave it open to their interpretation without overwhelming them with stage directions (assuming it ever gets put on!). The play should get the story across clearly enough without me having to state that a character is embarassed at a certain point, or flirty.

The power of words.

We'll see how it goes. I find it very hard to read it in script form and imagine how it will look, but one of the writing communities I have joined has a scriptwriting section so I will post it up there and open myself to their critique.

Bitterness, Guilt and Shame

Part of me is ashamed to even write this blog, but I think it may help so I will get it onto the page. I went out for some fresh air and ended up sitting in a local cafe with a cup of tea and the latest issue of the Stinging Fly. As is my wont, I turned first to the Contributors Page, and took a look at where the 22 writers were coming from and who'd done what. One writer's name was familiar from something else I had read today, so I decided to Google her on my cellphone (yes, fancy one with Internet, just adds to time wasted). Through various digressions from this author etc.., I ended up on Fish Publishing's Alumni page, where they have followed up on those who have won or being finalists in their competitions, to see where the accolade took them next.

As I read the descriptions of how each writer had gone on to win more, to be published, to release collections, etc.. etc..., I found to my disgust that a wave of bitterness was rising up inside me. It swelled until I became, frankly, distressed. I desperately didn't want to read of other writers' achievements and feel bitter, so my ensuing guilt and shame compounded the feeling. I stopped, switched off the phone, and sat there with my tea, thinking about why I was feeling this way.

I quickly realised that it was not that I was reading about their success and thinking

"Why them??"

but that what was buzzing through my brain was:

"When me? When me??"

The mere asking of that question then opened the floodgates and what came rushing through was "you, you'll never get there, you'll never make it, they're great writers, who do you think you are, why do you even bother", a whole stream of self-doubt and flagellation.

I paid for my tea and walked slowly home, forming this blog post in my head, knowing I needed to get it all out there. What do I make of this? On the one hand, I definitely do not want to write in order to win things, to see my name on a myriad of publications, to make money. I want to write because I need to write, because I feel ill if I don't, because what I write makes me laugh, moves me.

Yet.

Yet, I have a Word document on my hard drive, a table with a list of everything I have submitted stories to, and all the upcoming deadlines, and that list is growing, I add to it daily, and daily I check through the publications, the competitions, to see if they've announced, I check several times a day, I constantly refresh the pages to make sure they are up to date, I click and click - and it is making me crazy. This isn't what it is about. It isn't, is it?

And I have an agent. Well, I have been in touch with an agent for a few years. But nothing is moving on that front. I know it is because she believes I am not ready, my material isn't ready. And I know she's right. I don't have enough stories I love passionately to put in a collection. But still... I feel a rush, I want it now, I want it all.

So, do I delete this document? Do I forget about the agent? Do I stop sending off stories? Do I shut myself off from potential readers and just write?

I feel I am in a real transition period now - a few months ago, three or so, I stopped working as a journalist to try and write short stories full time. I am now a full time short story writer. This means I write for two hours a day, on the good days, but the joy of it is that I don't have a head full of editors clamouring for articles, of people I have to phone and interview, of technologies I have to look up on the Internet and try to understand. No, all that is in my head are stories, characters, ideas. And it's bliss.

So perhaps I need the bitterness and the guilt and the self-doubt to push me, because no-one else is pushing me. Perhaps in moderation the negativity will keep prodding me to do it. Moderation, that is the key. I have to keep positive. I have to have other writers around me, physically and spiritually, in person and on line.

I feel a little better now. Not fully. It's still inside me, all of it. It will take a while to dissipate. Maybe I can turn it into something, maybe I can work with it. We will see.

I imagine I am not the only writer who feels this way. Of course not. If anyone is out there and has some words of advice, wants to tell me to quit whining and just get on with it, be my guest! I need it!

Most overrated books

Ah, nice to see Prospect magazine giving people a chance to bitch about books . I was happy to see Saturday by Ian McEwan in there, I personally found it unreadable. Sadly, the list of underrated books was very thin on fiction, and short story collections were non-existent. Funny, since they are pretty much the definition of underrated in England, it seems.

quick note on writing and health

PS I was feeling really crappy this morning, sore throat, stuffed up head... but after my 45-minutes writing with V, I am feeling so much better, my head has cleared, I feel a certain clarity and focus, my throat isn't bothering me anymore.

This isn't a scientific claim, but I don't believe the two are unrelated. Writing might just be good for your health.

Maybe.

remote writing karma

I have just had the wonderfully surreal and extremely productive experience of writing together with my friend V, although we are in different countries. She suggested that we pick a time, and then write for 45 minutes using a list of prompts that she prepared, weaving each one into the story until we had used them all. I just finished my 45 minutes and sent her my offering.

While I was writing, I really sensed that we were working in the same space, I felt that energy that comes from writers writing in close proximity. When I first read through the prompts, I was a little taken aback and unsure what would come - but a full and contained 928 word story emerged, with a beginning, middle and end. I don't think it's my best work, but it wasn't there an hour ago and now it is in the world, and that is something worth celebrating, no?

Inspiration

Just a quick note to say - I thought I had no new stories in my head right now, but I sat with my friend and fellow writer D in a cafe this afternoon, and wrote a new flash and started another longer piece. Out of nowhere.

It's magic.

May it never dry up!

Rewriting

I have had a revelation.

Rewriting.

Yes, I am of course not as naive as to assume that the first words that get put on a page are it, and should never be messed with. But I hadn't quite realised - or, let's say, allowed myself to realise - how much a writer can "mess with" a story, draft after draft. This revelation came about thanks to a book called Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction by David Michael Kaplan which my friend Vanessa highly recommended. This book gave me permission to do things I had never imagined to the stories I felt needed work - change everything, kill characters, switch a character's sex, change the place, the time, the voice, the plot. I don't know why, but just reading the open few pages of the introduction to the book liberated me to try all sorts of things I had never tried.

Now, one of my new favourite pastimes is taking a story I wrote a few years ago, a story a few thousand words in length, a story parts of which I liked but which always irked me (like the story I thought was poignant but other people found hysterically funny), and rewrite the story in under 300 words. Make it flash.

Wow, this really works!

I've done this with two stories now, and it is amazing what comes out. A whole new twist emerged in both cases, which made them far more interesting than the longer, more cumbersome version.

I love flash fiction, I believe you can say almost everything in 250 words, so I am not now going to try and "scale up" these stories, even though I would like more words for my eventual collection, but that's another story for another post. But these stories make me happy just the (brief) way they are.

Thank you David Michael Kaplan.
Thank you Vanessa.
Thank you all for your attention.
Post over.

searches and wierd art

Ok, I've never done this before, but I just had a look at the stats for this blog on my Sitemeter page, and it tells you the referrals that led people to your blog - including what key words they were searching for when they found your blog.

So, here are some of the key words that will , through Google, Yahoo or MSN, bring an intrepid reader to titaniawrites:

"Shavua tov" ok, not so strange.

"IsraelLand" who would be searching for this??

"clean page to write on" .... stranger and stranger. I'm the third hit on this search!

"research and "alcoholic teacher"" - well, I come in Number One on this.

"wierd art" - yes, I spelled weird wrong. So, it seems, did rather a lot of other people.

"world watsu week" - and this on Brazilian Google!


Well, this is all rather interesting - and quite frightening. I hadn't thought that my blog posts were find-able through Google et al. I thought they were tucked away in BloggerWorld and I could say anything I liked in confidence to the few people who might be reading this.

Wrong.

And now I am going to turn up on the search page for BloggerWorld. Aaaaarrrggghhhh.

the joy of community

Well, more on brief moments of fame: I have enjoyed twice in the past few days being accosted in various cafes around Jerusalem by people (well, two women) who saw me in the play and wanted to tell me how much they enjoyed it. And I have to admit that I got a kick out of it. This is a small city, there aren't that many places to go, and so it's bound to happen. Then again, people could see me, think "Aha, wasn't she in that play? I really didn't enjoy that/her", and completely ignore me. So I do appreciate it when someone takes the time away from their cappucino to make me blush a little. Thank you. That's one kind of community that is very heart-warming.

Another is the community of writers. I realised that as much as I love writing this blog, I would love it even more to have other short story writers' blogs to read and for them to read mine and for us all to swap tips, condolences on rejection, congratulations on acceptance and everything else the insecure writer requires to keep her afloat. I have one great writer friend, VanessaGebbie, with whom I engage in mutual commenting, and this week I decided to look at who comments on her blogs, follow the links to theirs, make my mark there and see what comes.

Well, I was delighted to discover today (suprisingly, since for some reason blogger has stopped notifying me when someone posts a comment, bloody beta versions!) that two of the writers whose blogs I stopped into took the time to pay a return visit. Nice to meet you, B.A. GoodjohnHilaryMack. I hope this mig and ht be the beginning of something beautiful - in an online, short story writer kind of way.

shortlisting & performing

I know it's not a winning strategy in life to place too much importance on the praise of others, but I can't deny the fact that it is a good feeling. I am performing in a play this week, my character is the comic relief, and making an audience laugh has got to rank up there with one of the best sensations. (However, when they laugh at the part where I am actually being serious.... that's a little upsetting, I am obviously doing something not quite right, will work on that for the last two performances next week).

And along those same lines - and far more importantly in terms of my chosen vocation - it is such a boost when one of my short stories gets somewhere - and this week I found out I have been shortlisted for a competition. It just makes my day, well, my week, really. But there is that downside: when I don't get anywhere, I feel crushed, rejected. That's life, eh? I could try and coast along, not caring whether anyone likes what I write or not, but then I would miss out on the excitement as well as shielding myself from despair. There are no easy answers.

Now my most pressing concern is finding a good quinoa recipe with carrots. Suggestions welcome.

Historical One-Page is History

Ah well, my oh-so-clever 300-word story-that-I-thought-was-historical didn't make it into the shortlist for the Fish Historical One-Page short story contest. But congrats (again!) to Frances for making the short list, fingers crossed.

Still waiting for a few other comp results this week or next, and I have 'flu, which doesn't make things any better. I was supposed to be at Robert mcKee's STORY screenwriting seminar today, but 12 hours of it yesterday, listening to him rant and rave, plus my fever today, and that's enough to keep me home in bed.

Just found a whole load of competitions to enter in the US - except all but one of them require entries by post (by post!!) and entry fees in dollars. Do they want non-Americans to enter? Doesn't look like it. Have they heard of PayPal? Is email a foreign concept? Some of them have been very kind when I have emailed to say that I can't get a dollar cheque, and they are trying to make alternative arrangements. I think that sometimes Americans might forget that there are other people outside America... and we want to get our hands on your prize money. Make it a little easier for us, please!

Films in the afternoon

I just went to see a film. At two o'clock in the afternoon. Doctors should prescribe afternoon films. What a restoratative! It didn't even really matter what the film was (The Prairie Home Companion, very cute) , just the mere fact of sitting in the cinema, with only four other people, when you know that it is daylight outside, a time when other poor drudges are slogging away in offices, making phone-calls, sending emails, drinking coffee... Ahhh, the decadence of the pre-5pm (cheaper tickets) afternoon movie.... When the lights dimmed, every muscle in my body breathed out, my joints loosened, my jaw relaxed, I became like jelly. And for that hour and a half (with a five minute break during which I fought the urge for cheap chocolate) I was tranquil, I was in another world, spirited away.

I walked out into the busy mall, which normally sets my teeth on edge, with a huge grin on my face, as if I had just had a two-hour deep tissue arometherapy Swedish massage, rode down the escalator beaming, bought some not-so-cheap dark chocolate (isn't that what you need, girls, when all is well with the world?) and made my way home, even the asinine drivers on the roads not getting a rise out of me.

I must do this regularly. Under the excuse of "listening to how writers write dialogue". I think that'll fly with the boss (i.e. Me). No?

Two lives - past and present

Just a quick note... I spent today, Shabbat, reading, and what I was mainly reading was Vikram Seth's excellent and moving non-fiction book, Two Lives, about his Indian great-uncle, Shanti, and his German Jewish wife, Henny. I am half way through, absorbing in reading of the letters sent to and from Henny by her German friends, talking about how they had tried to help Henny's mother and sister before they were deported and murdered, and about life in Germany just after the war. It is deeply upsetting, all of it.

And then, just after Shabbat, I get online to check in with the news and I see this on the front page of the BBC: Envoy: 'German Jews feel unsafe' :

"The Israeli ambassador to Germany has said he is concerned for Jews in Germany, against the background of what he says is rising anti-semitism there.

In a newspaper interview, Shimon Stein said the number of neo-Nazis in Germany had also increased. The interview appeared as neo-Nazi sympathisers gathered outside Berlin's Tegel Prison to demand the release of a singer jailed for three years. A court ruled that Michael Regener's band was spreading racial hatred. Mr Stein told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung he believed there was a greater willingness on behalf of neo-Nazis to use violence.

"I have the feeling that Jews in Germany do not feel safe. They are not always able to practice their religion freely," he said. "

It is hard to adequately describe my feelings at reading this. It is hard for me to find words for them. I don't think I need even find words. I want to lose myself again in the world of fiction, in my characters and their stories, a world in which, perhaps, I have some measure of control.

Shavua tov to everyone, a good week, a better week.

funniest thing ever

OK, this is hysterical.
Maybe it's only funny to cat-lovers... but actually I think it's universally side-splitting.

Hmm, I know, should be writing about fiction.

Soon.

Soon.

plays etc..

I've been thinking about plays. I am in a play right now, in rehearsals, me with an American accent. We go up in a month. Now, I won't mention the title of the play but it's award-winning. Yes, fine, but it ain't exactly Arthur Miller or Pinter, know what I mean? And I've been thinking to myself "I can do this. " It helps that I took a short play-writing course (or a short-play writing course). It's liberating to write in a different form. As part of the course, I've tried to adapt one of my short stories, The White Road, into a ten-minute stage play.

It's hard.

First, because the short story is in the first person and it is entirely in her head. Well, that and talking to her dog.

Dogs on stage are not what a director longs for. So the dog has become "virtual". Sorry, Fluff.

Next, you can't just have her talking to the audience all the time, telling us what she's thinking. Ah no. Need a little more subtelty (how do you spell that??). Show, not tell. Hmmm.

And finally, there can be no two-dimensional, un-fleshed-out characters in a ten minute play.

So basically, a total rewrite is called for. Right now my main character is American, hint of a southern accent. I'm thinking of moving the accent to Yorkshire instead. Maybe. I dunno. And how many stage directions can I give? I can't map out her every move, can I? Gotta leave something for the actors to do, eh.

Urgh, this is hard. But fun. I've been thinking that maybe scripts are the way to go. I've applied for a place on Robert "Story" McKee's upcoming three-day screenwriting workshop at the beginning of Nov. I've got an idea for a film. For the beginning of a film. Problem is I can't get to the middle and I have no clue about the end.

Hopefully, Robert will help. Will keep you posted.

Ilkley 2

Well, just discovered I know the person who won the Ilkley Short Story comp - we met at a short story festival a few years ago, so congratulations Frances! If I couldn't win, I'm happy that it's someone I know of, at least.

OK, sore hand, must stop typing.

No, it's not from all the writing I've been doing. More's the pity.