Anatomy Of A Short Story

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Big Brother, British Columbia, For Books' Sake, gender, horror, inspiration, Jeremy Kyle, La Push, Lakeview, Lakeview Journal of Literarture & Arts, literary journals, literature, macabre, Miley Cyrus, Olympia National Park, point of view, reality TV, rejection, research, short fiction, shortstories, Sixteen Feet, The Manchester Fiction Prize, The Twilight Saga, Twilight, Washington State, writing

During the 2016 Easter holiday I read a news story on the BBC website. They have a sidebar for the most clicked and I often look here for short story inspiration because it usually contains some little-known news item that has piqued the public imagination. On this particular occasion, the story that caught my eye was about fifteen severed feet that had washed up along a stretch of coast in British Columbia, Canada. The details were scant but macabre, the first foot was discovered in 2007 and five more appeared on the same coast over the next year, the gruesome discoveries stopped in 2012 and resumed again in 2016 bringing the total number to fifteen. There was speculation that it was a seafaring serial killer, tying chains around his victim’s feet to throw them overboard, theories ran from alien abduction to human traffickers but there was, at that time, no reasonable explanation.

It had a definite Scandi-noir feeling about it that I knew I wanted to explore. I started to formulate a story from the point of view of one of the people who had found a foot. Initially the main character was a woman who was out jogging on the beach with her dog. As I wrote I realised that there would need to be more to it, the main character would need a personal tragedy which added emotional resonance to the initial shock of discovery, so I imagined a partner lost at sea, there being no body to bury giving the protagonist a feeling of affinity to the severed foot, even convincing herself that the foot belonged to her husband.

I have never been to British Columbia so I played with setting the action in Scotland or Ireland but it didn’t feel right.  I have been to Washington State, spending time at La Push on the Olympic Peninsula, you probably know it as a location for the Twilight books and films, it’s desolate and eerie and a lot of things wash up on the shore. I decided to set my story there, it’s only a few miles south of Vancouver Island and I had photographs and memories of walking on the beaches there which made the descriptions easier to conjure. I’ve never been afraid of writing in an American accent, American culture is so familiar to us now and I’ve visited enough times to find it relatively easy to mimic. (Of course I may well get the odd word wrong but a lot of my work is set in the US and I have beta readers who I can ask about Americanisms.) I think as a rule, if you’re not comfortable don’t do it but if you can it’s good to stretch.

The first draft took a week to write. We were on holiday at my Father-in-law’s in Devon and perhaps the change of scene made the words flow faster. About half way through I realised I wanted the couple to be gay. I decided to make the main character a man mourning the loss of his husband who was a fisherman. I wanted to add another level to the story by normalising the couple and placing them out of a city in a remote area. The moment I decided on this it was like a light turning on. I went back over everything and changed what I needed to but deliberately kept the gender of the narrator ambiguous until near the end when he goes to see the local sheriff and is addressed by name. A lot of readers still think it’s a woman even though the name is very specifically male. I find this interesting in terms of expectation – the implication being that I am a woman therefore I have to write about women. I love writing from a male point of view. I do it often and it is very liberating!

Once the first draft was done I did a lot of research. I looked up every article and news broadcast I could find on the phenomenon, there were interviews with the people who had found the feet and law enforcement officials and hundreds of icky photographs. I discovered that most of the feet were found in running shoes, that the ankle was usually bone and the foot still had flesh – it was gruesome and fascinating and provided rich detail for the second and third drafts.

I was really pleased with it when it was done and began sending it off to journals and competitions. Then came the usual round of rejections. On November 9^th – two days before my birthday and the day we knew Donald Trump was the next US President – I got a phone call from The Manchester Fiction Prize telling me I’d been shortlisted. If you don’t know, The Manchester Fiction Prize is a big deal, the winner gets £10,000 for a single short story but just getting on the shortlist of six is a major event for any writer. There was a fancy gala in Manchester, I didn’t win, to be honest I don’t think anyone ever expects to win such things, but I did have a fantastic time, a career ambition had been realised and it gave me a huge confidence boost.

The story was published on a pdf on the prize website but I thought it deserved to reach a wider audience. Over the next few years I submitted it everywhere that accepted previously published stories, I  approached journals in all honesty saying it had been shortlisted and appeared in pdf only. I got absolutely nowhere. When my collection, 15 Minutes, came to be published I tried to shoe-horn the story into it, changing some of the details to fit into the theme of fame but it didn’t feel right so I left it out. Thankfully Sixteen Feet has now been picked up by the wonderful Lakeview International Journal of Literature & Arts and you can read it there for free.  I suppose the purpose of this blog post is simply to say never give up on something you think deserves better, eventually when the tide is right it will wash up on shore.

End note – because of this blog post a story for 15 Minutes is now on For Books’ Sake Weekend Read and you can read it here. That’s two free reads from me this week, if you want to read more please buy the book!

Unbound Diary Part 11 – Almost There!

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competitions, crowdfunding, literature, mentoring, publishers, Riptide Journal, short stories, short story appraisals, starlings, submissions, The Bristol Short Story Prize, The Fish Short Story Prize, The Manchester Review, Unbound, workshops, writers, writing, writing workshops

A lot has happened since I last blogged here. I was stuck around the 45% mark for what seemed like an eternity, thinking that I was never going to get this thing funded. Last week I had a conversation with a Twitter friend, the fab short story writer Safia Moore, who not only pledged to the book but suggested that the pledge options I should be pushing were the ones for large sums, the short story appraisals and mentoring packages. She pointed out that I am the director of a short story prize, have been short-listed in a few myself, and am a tutor! She is of course right on all counts. It’s funny how when you are in the middle of something you can’t see it for what it is. I started pushing these options on social media and so far someone has pledged for £400 of mentoring and four people have pledged for short story appraisals. I suddenly find myself 81 % funded, so thank you Safia for reminding me of what I have to offer!

If you keep getting nowhere when sending out short story submissions, or entering competitions, perhaps you could do with a little help from the director of a prize, who has been published in Riptide and The Manchester Review and short-listed for The Bristol and Fish prizes. I am an experienced tutor, mentor and editor with an MA (dist) in Creative Writing and an acclaimed novel.

On offer as part of crowdfunding for In The Future Everyone Will Be Famous For Fifteen Minutes are:

Short Story Appraisal up to 5,000 words with full edit and notes – £100

Mentoring,  4 face to face sessions (skype, email or phone for those too far away) up to 20,000 words with full edit and notes. This can be part one manuscript or several short stories. £400

2 hour Short Story Workshop for 5 people (South East and possibly Yorkshire) £200

These packages are offered at a much lower price than my usual rate and at a much lower price than most literary consultancies. Not only will they greatly benefit your writing but you will facilitate the publication of a book of short stories that would not otherwise be published.

You could of course just prove all the people who think short stories aren’t worth publishing wrong and pledge £10 in support of the book. You will be a patron of the arts and I am so very grateful that so many of you have already done so.

 

 

My Unbound Diary Part 6 – Crowdfunding Events, Pledgers and The Radio

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Amanda Palmer, BBC Radio Sussex, Brighton, City Reads, crowdfunding, digital publishing, James Ellis, literature, Lonny Pop, Pierre Hollins, Rachael de Moravia, Rattle Tales, Sarah Gorrell, short stories, spoken word, Stephanie Lam, Stephen McGowan, TED, The Brighton Prize, The Nightingale Room, Unbound, writers

I am half way through! And it’s not been easy I can tell you. I feel like I’ve had to coax each pledge into being. My short story collection In The Future Everyone Will Be World Famous For Fifteen Minutes is so close to 30% funded. Obviously, I need a lot more pledges to reach 100% in the next 6 weeks. I am banking on momentum. Word of mouth, people wearing down in the face of constant bombarment. I would hate me right now if I wasn’t me. Once again thank you to everyone who has already pledged; I am in awe of you because you are making this book seem possible and when it is funded you will have helped create something new.

I have just started on an all out email campaign. Emailing everyone I know either directly or through Facebook. It’s a bit soul destroying. I can’t shake the feeling that I am begging but my friend and fellow writer Stephanie Lam directed me to Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk on crowdfunding (The Art of Asking) and that made me feel a whole lot better. I’m not begging, I am offering people the opportunity to co-create a book that wouldn’t otherwise exist, to be a part of the art.

It’s interesting who pledges and who doesn’t. It’s not what you expect. People you haven’t seen for years reply immediately and say they’ve pledged and ask how you are. People you’d expect to be onboard from the off flat out tell you it’s not their thing. I wonder if the digital aspect is putting some people off. The book will initially be available in digital format only. This isn’t to say you need an e-reader to read it, when the book is published you will get a copy emailed to download onto whatever, laptop, PC or phone you prefer. There will be paper copies I am told, for events and signings and if the book gets enough pledgers it might even get a full press – but that is a long way off. Right now I need to meet my target of 253 more pledges.

One thing which hasn’t surprised me is the community around the Unbound crowdfunding process. There is a Facebook group for shell-shocked Unbound authors to swap tips and give each other encouragement. Most authors are lovely supportive people – and I’ve met a lot of them in the last ten years! I put a post up about doing an event in Brighton and several writers replied and after a few email exchanges it’s going ahead in Brighton on the 18th April. If you are in the area please come along – entry is free. So is the venue, thanks to a tip from City Read’s Sarah Hutchings I managed to book the wonderful Nightingale Room in side the Grand Central Pub right next door to Brighton Station. Unbound authors James Ellis, Stephen McGowan, Rachael de Moravia, Pierre Hollins and me will be reading from our books. My fellow Rattle Taler Lonny Pop will be hosting and there may even be someone from Unbound editorial to answer questions about crowdfunding. I will be on BBC Radio Sussex tonight at 5.50 to talk about The Brighton Prize but always on the look out for new supporters I will be mentioning this event too!

Full Of Things That Have Never Been

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Araminta Hall, Bridget Whelan, Brighton, Catherine Quinn, competitions, Cornerstones Literary Agency New Writing South, David Headley, Emlyn Rees, Jo Rees, Kate Harrision, Laura Wilkinson, literature, Lizzie Enfield, Myriad Editions Julia Crouch, publishers, Rattle Tales, Rilke, Sharon Bowers, short stories, Simon Toyne, Simon Trewin, Small Batch, spoken word, starlings, Sue Teddern, The Angel House, The Beach Hut Writing Academy, The Short review, William Shaw, Write by the Beach, writing

And now we welcome the New Year. Full of things that have never been.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Isn’t that a glorious quote for the new year? January is a difficult month, everyone is full of lethargy and Christmas excess. This year it seems like all our heroes are dying. The weather is awful. The nights are long and dark. It’s hard to get motivated. For a writer it can be the most depressing time of year. I have often found it hard to get started. If I haven’t written for a couple of weeks, getting back into stride can feel like climbing a mountain. It’s all a matter of perspective of course, as Rilke’s quote illustrates. This year I am determined to see the new year not in terms of the past but in terms of what’s to come.

Rilke was himself was a wanderer, a traveller of no fixed location, he sought lovers and patronage and never truly settled. He moved from one possibilty to another, across Europe into the Middle East and Russia, back to Paris and then, fatefully,Switzerland where he died at 51 of leukemia. A short and packed life of longing and regret that produced breathtaking poetry. Read some.

This year my resolution isn’t to lose weight or drink less! I probably will, but under no pressure to do so, 2016 will instead be a year of action. I have plans. I have words to write and opportunities to exploit. I have a fully finished short story collection and a half finished novel. This year I will find an agent and a publisher and move things on and if I don’t find either I will move things on anyway. There is always a way. There are always things that have never been.

The first Rattle Tales show of 2016 takes place on Feb 16th at The Brunswick in Hove. We had an amazing response to our call for submissions and we are reading through them all now to come up with a programme as varied, entertaining and thought provoking as all our shows. Do come along and see what we are all about.

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I am involved in two very exciting projects this year. Firstly, The Brighton Prize (of which I am a co-director) enters its third year and we are in a position to expand. The competition will go international for the first time and we are adding categories for flash fiction and local writers. I will have more information on this very soon but we recently asked for volunteers to help us develop the prize, and Rattle Tales in general, and were literally overwhelmed by the response. I’m really looking forward to the group taking this project forward and to working with new, talented and enthusiastic people.

I am also involved in The Beach Hut Writing Academy, a new writing school established by professional writers in Brighton. I did my first course for them last year, co-teaching on short story practice with Bridget Whelan, and it was a very enjoyable success. The new courses begin on Jan 21st with a Fiction Writing course run by best-selling author Aramanita Hall and then a TV and Radio course taught by Sue Teddern and Hannah Vincent. Our most ambitious plan for early 2016 is a writers conference in Brighton on March 12th. Write by the Sea will feature, best-selling authors, publishers and agents taking part in panel discussions, workshops and one to one pitches, all at the beautiful sea front venue The Angel House. We have agents Simon Trewin, David Headley and Sharon Bowers, Cornerstones Literary Agency, local publishers Myriad Editions, The Writer’s Guild of Great Britain, authors Simon Toyne, Julia Crouch, Lizzie Enfield, Laura Wilkinson, Araminta Hall, Catherine Quinn, Kate Harrison, Sarah Rayner, Sue Teddern, Bridget Whelan, Jo and Emlyn Rees, William Shaw and me. There will also be one to ones where you can pitch or discuss your current project. The full programme is available on our website and the early bird rate is in place until Jan 24th.

Before I had a publisher for Starlings I attended a similar event at The Jubilee Library run by New Writing South. I met other writers, agents and publishers and came away with a wealth of advice and contacts that really helped me get my book published. Rattle Tales is sponsoring a session on Writing A Prize-winning Short Story and so two worlds collide. You’d be crazy to miss it.

Losing Control – TEDx and The Brighton Prize

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Book Slam, Charleston, Cheryl Powell, competitions, control, Grit Lit, literature, Lonny Pop, Lucy Flannery, Peter James, Rattle Tales, reading aloud, short stories, spoken word, TEDx, The Brighton Prize

Last night I did something I’ve never done before. It was the awards show for the 2015 Brighton Prize and I am lucky enough to be one of the Directors. We wanted as many of our ten shortlistees to read as possible, fortunately our winner Lucy Flannery was there to read her prize-winning story, Calm Down Dear, but our two runners up, Tamsin Cottis and Cheryl Palmer couldn’t make it.  I offered to read Cheryl’s story Mermaid for her. I loved this story from the first round of reading, it was very striking and original and had a poetic rhythm to it fitting to the title. When I was practising in the afternoon I realised that I hadn’t ever read somebody else’s work to an audience.

I made my stage debut five years ago, when I read at Brighton’s Grit Lit event in December 2010. I was absolutely petrified and on last! Somehow I managed to get through without anyone guessing how nervous I was. I thought that my right leg was shaking so much that people must have seen it but nobody mentioned it. What people did do was come up and congratulate me on my reading. Since then, I have read my own work many times, usually in dingy cabaret bars but also in festival tents and university conferences. I am always nervous but it does depend on what I’m reading. If a story is very personal to me I will be terrified, if I have any doubts about what I’m reading my hands will tremble and my mouth will dry. Sometimes, when I know it’s good, when people I trust have told me it’s my best, I will be more in control. 

On Friday I went to the TEDx talks at The Brighton Dome. The theme this year was Losing Control. All the speeches addressed the relinquishing of control as a positive experience, the act of venturing out of our comfort zones making us better humans, more open, able to live up to our true potential. These talks made me think of my own experience reading my writing to an audience. At one point my nerves were so bad that I had a form of hypnosis to try and tackle the root cause. It worked, up to a point, but I always have a little bit of stage fright, I always stumble a bit over my words or suffer from shaky hand syndrome. Last night was the exception. I think because the words weren’t mine I could read without fear. I didn’t feel nervous at all. It was probably my best reading. Now comes the tricky bit. It’s okay to be a bit nervous but I would like not to be. I would like to be able to read my own stories the way I read Cheryl’s. To be in control. Then again, perhaps losing control makes me a more emotional reader and helps get the message across with more impact. Whichever it is, I know that if I want to be a writer I have to keep on doing public readings, it’s part of the game, and if you want to be a writer you will need to do them too. So, deep breath, let yourself go.

The winner of the Brighton Prize 2015, Lucy Flannery, with our host Lonny Pop. The shortlist and details of the prize are on our website www.brightonprize.com

Latitude 2015, Dracula and Political Poets

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Breaking Bad, Dracula, Hanif Kureshi, Latitude, Latitude Festival, literature, live lit, Luke Wright, Mike Figgis, pink sheep, poetry, Portishead, Rob Auton, short stories, Suffolk, The Sopranos, The Wire, Thom Yorke

I’m just back from Latitude Festival and this year was certainly one to remember.  Of the party I was with, one almost teen was carted off in an ambulance due to a crushing incident at Catfish & the Bottlemen and another left in an ambulance due to a perforated appendix. Before that everything was great! Thankfully both kids are fine and on their way to recovery. This (and events in the news) has made me aware of how precious and breakable our almost growns are. I spent much of this Latitude hanging out with my thirteen year old son. We went a day after my husband and youngest because he was on a school trip to Amsterdam. We caught the train to Diss on Friday and found ourselves sitting opposite Hanif Kureshi. He seemed at bit grumpy so I didn’t ask for a recap on his thoughts about Creative Writing MAs; instead, we just interrupted his sleep by eating crisps and watching Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Junior) on the iPad. It’s much easier by train, no massive traffic jams just a coach from Diss to the Orange Gate and you’re in.  

I have blogged from the festival before, it is such a relaxed, happy event and it helped that the sun shone and the sheep were neon. The poetry tent rocked it this year. Every time I walked by people were spilling out of the edges, craning to listen to beat box poets, sound and word artists and the politically angry. Luke Wright’s poem/play , What I Learned From Johnny Bevan, was outstanding, heartfelt, personal and yet political with a capital P. Like all good art it wasn’t perfect, it was bit rough around the edges, but it said more about the current state British politics than a thousand episodes of Question Time.  There were lots of big names this year, Michael Rosen, John Cooper Clarke, Simon Armitage but the crowds came for the lesser-known too, and I managed to catch, and laugh along with, Emma Jones and Rachel Pantechnichon but missed out on Rob Auton on Sunday because I had to go home. Rob Auton is my poetry hero, I saw him at Latitude  a few years ago and used his book with the reading group at BHT, you should buy his book.

I was a bit disappointed in the Literary Arena, maybe most of the good stuff was on Thursday and Sunday when I wasn’t there. There was a lot of debate and hardly any short story, which is odd for an arts festival as short stories are perfect for dropping in on and listening for ten minutes. My writing career highlight was having a short story read here by Word Theatre a couple of years ago. More short story Latitude. Interestingly the best advice on creativity was given in the Film Tent by Mike Figgis. After entertaining us with tales of working with Nic Cage, someone asked him if we were in the golden age of television. No, came the emphatic answer. The writing is good, The Sopranos was great, so was The Wire, but some shows start off with a great first season from one author and by the end are produced by a roundtable of writers all trying to get as much in as possible. You have to stick to the rules of your original story. He cited Breaking Bad, watchable as it was, by the end the interesting original character was transformed into a superman who had been in remission an unbelievable number of times and could create a car with a selective machine gun that only shot baddies and not him or Jesse. I have to say he makes a very good point.

Saturday was crazy busy and broiling. Little pink lambs gambolled by a reed bank and the sound of music reverberated from all sides. We meandered around a lot not really watching anything for long, drank ice cold fresh lemonade, bumped into friends from Brighton and got chased by a grass man in the Faraway Forest.  Night fell and Portishead transported us back to the 90s on the Obelisk stage and sounded more current than most of what I’d heard that afternoon. Then over to 6 Music for The Vaccines. Most of what was on the 6 Music stage should have been on the Obelisk Stage, you could hardly get near for any of the bands, many were just too big for the tent. The same with the not very secret midnight Thom Yorke gig in the woods; thousands were queuing for that by 9.30.  

I didn’t bother; instead I went to my second highlight of this year, Action To The Word’s modern musical Dracula in The Theatre Arena. Packed to the door and glorious gory fun across the midnight hour, this was a cleverly choreographed production with its tongue firmly in its cheek (when it wasn’t hanging out of Dracula’s mouth). They combined Grand Guignol plasma and corsetry with modern rock, giving us appropriately placed versions of Foo Fighters, The Doors, Mumford and Sons and yes, Radiohead – I didn’t have to go into the woods after all.

I’m off for the summer now – see you in Sept for some exciting Brighton Prize news.

 

 

Desk Envy

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A Room Of Ones Own, books, Bronte sisters, cafes, cats, desks, Dickens, Hemmingway, literature, Roald Dahl, sharing, Virginia Woolf, writing, writing sheds

I have been thinking a lot lately about Virginia Woolf’s ‘room of one’s own’. The actual quotation is, ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’ It strikes me as peculiar that when quoting her people often go straight for the essay title and leave out the money bit.  Woolf goes on, ‘In the first place, to have a room of her own was out of the question unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble.’ Thankfully that class nonsense isn’t so much of an issue these days but, as any impoverished writer knows if you don’t have enough cash you’ll have to share your space.

Just a desk of my own would suit me. At present I share mine (in the far corner of the lounge) with my husband, two kids and the cat. It is the favoured location for homework, photographic editing, Ben 10 games and the preferred sleeping spot of the cat (high up and under a nice warm desk lamp. This week I have a particularly bad case of desk envy. At the weekend we moved the youngest from cot bed to grown-up bunk bed, the bottom shelf of which is made up entirely of desk space and a yard long bookcase (sigh!). Baby boy loves his new desk and has lined up his felt tips and sticker books ready for action. The oldest has a similar arrangement in his room but and clear space is hidden under boy stuff and sweet wrappers so he can’t actually use it. He uses mine instead. Come 3.30 and any access to the family desk is blocked by a ten-year-old (sometimes with several friends) frantically clicking at the mouse to try and get to the next level. After he’s gone to bed my husband takes possession to tinker with pixels. I shouldn’t complain; I’ve got it all day haven’t I? And it’s not as if I’ve anything else to do.

Twitter isn’t helping. There’s always some super-successful author moaning about how cold it is in their Roald Dahl style writing shed. Are you having a laugh? A whole shed? Buy an electric heater and shut up about it. Next you’ll be winging about how humid it is and how annoying the glare of the sun is through your leaden windows!  I bet your cat doesn’t keep closing down your masterpiece as it stretches out on the keyboard, knocking over precarious piles of books, magazines and games. I really should give it spring clean but I don’t really have the time. I take heart from this picture of Einstein’s desk – look at the state of that!

I have been looking at a lot of pictures of famous writer’s desks, just out of curiosity. There are loads to choose from – just Google it and marvel at the variety. Some are neat and tidy.  I’m a bit suspicious of those; I can’t work if there’s too much order and wonder where these authors put their ‘research’ and how much time they spend colour-coding their pen collection. I’m fascinated by the writing space of really famous authors, to go to the former home of Dickens or The Brontes and have a nose around is heavenly. I love to touch the grain of an ancient wooden desk and think about all the creativity that was born there, the toiling of an author long dead over a work still read decades later. It’s inspiring just looking at the pictures and interesting too, the neatness, the size. Jane Austen wrote on a tiny little table by the window with a quill pen, Hemmingway (in Key West at least) wrote in the middle of the room over-looked by the heads of animals he had shot, the Brontes sat together at an enormous dining table like an early writing co-operative (mind you there wasn’t much else to do was there?). Sharing my desk with the cat doesn’t really help me much; apart from the occasional yawn he’s not great on feedback.

Of course I have a laptop so I can just head out and find a bohemian café to agonise in. The thing is I’m not that keen. The words don’t really flow in public cafes. For a start off I usually bump into someone I know and then there’s the hovering waiting staff asking if I want a refill, or babies crying and if I drink too much coffee it costs a fortune and I keep needing the loo. The café has to be just right, it has to be big enough to hide in from friends and waiters, with tall ceilings and no piped music, and I prefer diverting decoration and real-fire cosiness. As you can see I am quite hard to please, especially for someone whose own writing space isn’t up to much, but I think if I’ve made the effort to go out to write it should be worth going out for. I have found my perfect writing café but I’ve only been there once about 15 years ago, it’s on the ground floor of a hotel in Brussels and I have no idea what the hotel is called or where it is in the city. It’s a beautiful place with no literary pretensions whatsoever (unlike all those French tourist-trap cafes where Scott Fitzgerald partied until dawn) the ceilings are high and chandeliered, the walls are mirrored, the tables hidden behind marble pillars. I sat there for hours one day undisturbed. I only wish I knew what it was called (but my memory isn’t as good as it was!) then I could try and persuade the owners to transport it here brick by brick and re-build it just down the road.

A Good Book Group

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book groups, Brighton, connections, literature, research, starlings, writing

This week I went to a book group. I’ve been to a few recently, just when I thought STARLINGS had pretty much sold as much as it was going to people have been telling me they’re reading the book and would I like to go to their book group. I have been asked to several recently. I love a good book group. I went to a few before Starlings even had a publisher, emailing them extracts beforehand and asking for their likes and dislikes. This was extremely helpful to me in completing the final drafts of the book, people at books groups gave me confidence in my writing but also told me how it could be improved and what didn’t quite work. I would recommend doing this to any author, your writing group will read like writers but a book group is usually made up of readers so it’s them who will be your key customers. The book groups always said how vital the book seemed when read in draft form, fresh off the printer.

The thing about book groups is you get to spend a couple of hours talking to readers about your work, you get to know them a bit, they usually give you wine and nibbles! It’s a very relaxed environment and literally anything can come up in the discussion. People will ask questions you’ve never thought of, people will make connections that are there but weren’t in your head when you wrote it. Because  Starlings is such a local book, I have met people at book groups with strong connections to it. When I wrote it I wanted the people reading it to think it was about people like them. At the most recent book group I was asked why I had used a particular address as the home of one of the characters? It wasn’t random, my grandfather lived there briefly in the 1960s, it turned out that the house was first house her husband had owned. At another group, a man asked me why I had changed the name of what was obviously The Booth’s Museum in the book. I replied that I didn’t want the curator to think that the curator in the book was based on him (he was very gracious in showing me around the museum at the research stage) and it turned out that the man was his nephew. This is what Starlings is about; the little connections between people in a city, and I have come across many like this in my visits to Brighton’s book groups. I even went to one in Hurstpierpoint. I was a little nervous since one of the chapters in the book is called The Vaginas of Hurstpierpoint, and is less than complementary about the place (this is the character’s view I hasten to add). They couldn’t have been nicer and, as it turned out, they relished having their home used as a location.

It might be scary, handing yourself over to the mercy of readers you’ve never met but almost always you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how nice they are. The most overt criticism I have come across has been silence, one or two people at groups who just didn’t speak, either they didn’t like the book or they were unbelievably shy but one of the things you have to learn when you write is that not everyone is going to like it.

So if you are a writer, if you have just had a book published or you have just written one, try and get it out there to book groups, it is a rewarding and confidence boosting experience.

Writing Famous Names

Tags

celebrities, literature, writing

On Thursday night I read at Rattle Tales again. The audience was a particularly vocal one who asked lots of questions (if you don’t know how Rattle Tales works check out our website). I read a story which featured Stephen Hawking a couple of the questions I was asked were about using the Professor in a fictional capacity. Our host asked me if I was nervous about using a real public figure in a fictional setting. I had to think about this, when I wrote the story I wasn’t bothered by it at all, it was based on an anecdote I was told about Stephen Hawking visiting a country pub, it struck me as an interesting story with great creative possibilities. I just sat down and wrote the whole thing in a couple of days without thinking about how I was portraying the real person. Then I took the story along to the two writing groups I belong to and, though everyone was very positive about the story, one or two people had reservations about me using a known public figure.

When I submitted it to Rattle Tales I had to be sure I wanted to run with it. I decided that it would be okay as it was based on an actual incident (though greatly elaborated and imagined) and I could see nothing libelous in it. Their concerns did make me realise that as a writer you have to be careful what you say and about whom.

The dictionary definition of libel is as follows

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation a negative or inferior image. This can be also any disparaging statement made by one person about another, which is communicated or published, whether true or false, depending on legal state. In Common Law it is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (theclaimant).

I cannot imagine anyone thinking that my story was in anyway factual, nor does it portray anybody in a negative or inferior light, quite the opposite in fact. I was very careful to research my subject so as to get any reference I made right. I watched Youtube videos, read articles and books, and probably invested far more time than was necessary for a little short story, but I think it paid off for both peace of mind and characterisation.

A friend in the audience, who has been to many of our shows, pointed out that I have form on this appropriation of the famous for fictional purposes, having performed stories in the past about the royal family and John Lennon. I had never thought of this, but he is right, I do it all the time! In STARLINGS I have chapters that feature Kenneth Moore and Princess Diana. I have also written about Jim Morrison (sort of). My friend wanted to know why, and who next? I suppose my answer is that the famous are now so much a part of our lives, on TV, in the papers and trashy magazines, that I instinctively put them into my fiction in the same way as I would the weather or a location. I don’t mean to do it but I think it helps me to create situations by using a well known reference point. For example, we all knew about the Royal Wedding months in advance and were bombarded with images, blanket TV coverage and souvenir pull-outs for weeks afterwards, right down to that stupid party book (which thankfully has somewhat undersold!) and so, when I read my story about a family watching the event, everyone was immediately there with them, and those of us you were sick to death of the sudden royal adulation could identify with the anti-royalist leading character. Similarly, when I wrote a story about a tramp in New York on the day John Lennon was shot, everyone could identify with the event.

When discussing this aspect of my writing later with my friend, I realised that I usually only give my famous characters walk on parts. I think this is because to me they are not the important ones, sure they have all the wealth and adulation but the people who matter most are the little people, the tramp no one cares about, the heartbroken bride on royal wedding day, the AIDS patient briefly visited by a princess he doesn’t recognise. These are the people who make up most of the population and I don’t mind using our common knowledge of famous folk to tell people about them.

I sometimes put words into the mouths of my famous characters and I suppose if I’m playing by the rules I really shouldn’t, they didn’t say it so it’s not factually accurate to say they did. But I write fiction, and fiction gives you a certain amount of  creative license. If you are going to put words into the mouth of a real person you have to make sure that they sound right. I was extremely pleased when people in the audience for my John Lennon story thought the line I had given him was a direct quote. The words I gave Prince William didn’t bother me so much, though he could easily have said them, but that was satire so who cares?! Stephen Hawking only says one word ‘Stephen’ and he probably says that a lot.

Who’s next? Now you’ve got me thinking…