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#164 Jun 2015 • £3.60

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Speech marks

New Adult

Beyond Word

Why giving more dialogue to characters will impress editors

How to break into this crossover genre for older young adults

Five writing apps designed to help authors do more

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Welcome

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A word from the editor

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ast week I was invited to talk to GCSE students interested in becoming journalists. The careers day was all about inspiring pupils, so I admitted that what had motived me was money. I’d enjoyed creative writing at school but took a journalism degree, did some freelancing, then went into women’s mags because they paid the most. I made a living doing something I liked – but making a living came first. These days the market has changed. Websites expect you to submit articles for nothing and some glossies expect you to pay them to work as an intern! Stuff that, I told the pupils. I’ve never written anything without knowing I’ll get paid. If you want to write for Kerrang! offer reviews and interviews to them, and sell any rejects to smaller mags. It will help next time. Freelancing is the best way to build your skills and CV, but try not to give work away. Whether you want to produce articles, books, fiction or non‑fiction, people take you more seriously if they see you’ve been paid to write. Give it a go.

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Write soon, Carl Don’t miss issue #165 on sale from 18 June Writers’ Forum Select Publisher Services Ltd PO Box 6337 Bournemouth BH1 9EH Tel 01202 586848 Publisher Tim Harris Editor Carl Styants Chief SUB Wendy Reed

Photography and artwork With thanks to Shutterstock COVER IMAge Mega Pixel © Select Publisher Services Ltd. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Writers’ Forum cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material. Writers’ Forum is fully independent and its views are not necessarily those of any company mentioned herein. All copyrights and trademarks are recognised. Every effort has been made to identify the copyright holders of images. Writers’ Forum cannot accept responsibility for inaccuracies or complaints arising from advertisements featured.

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For submissions, visit www.writers-forum.com/contact.html We reserve the right to edit any article or letter received. Please note that Writers’ Forum does not carry book reviews.

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headlines Newsfront The latest in the world of writing AUTHOR INTERVIEW Hard labour Australian novelist Venero Armanno talks to Glynis Scrivens about his struggles as an author Writers’ Circle Your letters plus First Draft FIRST STEPS Make writing pay Douglas McPherson explains how to take your first steps as a professional writer Promotion How to take an author photo Simon Whaley puts himself in the frame for an author selfie workshop WRITING EXERCISE Styling your story In a second look at style, Barbara Dynes looks at tone, tense and viewpoint – and sets some exercises Fiction markets Inside story Douglas McPherson explains why he chose an unusual format for his story about a singer INDUSTRY INSIGHT How to break into… New Adult Phil Barrington asks an editor and two authors for tips on this new crossover genre Computing Technophobia Keir Thomas takes a look at word processing software designed specifically for writers FREELANCE MARKETS The Magazine Scene Adam Carpenter’s round-up of industry news – plus Diary of a freelance hack AGONY AUNT Dear Della Della Galton answers your queries INSPIRATION Ideas Store Paula Williams has been experimenting with mindfulness TALES oF MY GURU Hugh Scott’s mystery mentor spends Midsummer’s Eve looking at characterisation

32 TIME TO WRITE 8 days a week In the final column, Phil Barrington sums up the series in three words 34 ACHIEVEmENT CALENDAR June Plot your progress – and see which famous writers were born this month 36 MOTIVATION Word up! Think positive with Janie and Cass Jackson 37 story competition Fiction judge Lorraine Mace introduces this month’s winners of £550 in cash prizes 46 Fiction workshop Doing dialogue Lorraine Mace uses readers’ stories to highlight the importance of dialogue 48 WRITING KNOW-HOW Research secrets Literary novelist Cassandra Parkin tells Anita Loughrey about the inspiration behind her novel The Beach Hut plus Writing Outlets with Janet Cameron 50 POETRY WORKSHOP Painting with words Poetry editor Sue Butler looks at how a thousand words can paint a picture plus Own Words 52 Poetry competition This month’s winners of £100 and dictionaries 54 Writers’ Directory This month’s events, writing courses and helpful books 58 FLASH COMP Our quick writing contest is FREE to subscribers plus the £100 winner from last month’s crime competition 60 earnings Where to earn money as a writer Susie Kearley looks at an earning survey 62 competition calendar Helen M Walters brings you the latest tips and comp news 65 Subscriptions Get Writers’ Forum delivered direct to your door 66 Where I write Phil Barrington visits popular author Carole Matthews

Writers’forum #164

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HEADLINES

newsFRONT The latest in the world of books, the internet and publishing – written by you

Manifesto moves

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Less than a week after winning the election with a slim majority, the new Conservative government has been setting out its stall in various areas. Newspapers, especially those controlled by Rupert Murdoch, were quick to claim that the appointment of John Whittingdale as Culture Secretary, was a declaration of ‘war on the BBC’, although the party itself denied this. Whittingdale has chaired a House of Commons select committee that proposed scrapping the BBC Trust and eventually the licence fee, replacing it with a ‘broadcast levy’ on all households regardless of whether they watch TV or not. Meanwhile campaigners voiced concern about the future of public libraries, given the Government’s pledge to impose five more years of austerity measures. Since 2010 some 272 libraries and mobile libraries have been closed or handed to community volunteers by cash-strapped councils.

Romance author comp Mills & Boon have launched ’a competition to find a new

romance author, in conjunction

Top authors take lion’s share of earnings Only around one in nine professional ’authors can earn a living just from their

writing, according to a newly released study. The top five per cent of professional authors earned 42 per cent of all income received by professional writers in 2013 according to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. The bottom half accounted for just seven per cent of all authors’ earnings. The ALCS’s Head of Rights Richard Combes said: ‘The creative industries are thriving, generating £76bn per annum, yet professional writers have seen a near 30 per High-earning cent reduction in earnings in recent years. author EL James Consequently many are no longer able to sustain a career.’ BBC arts editor Will Gompertz said that with more people writing and publishing books than ever before, the market cannot accommodate the hundreds of thousands of new books each year. ‘Readers, with little spare time, are overwhelmed by the choice and end up sticking to the authors they already know and trust. Hence the big brand authors trade even better in an overcrowded market.’ He said the situation made literary prizes even more important. ‘They provide a platform for new writing and an endorsed product on which time-poor punters can take a risk.’ Nicolette Cassar White

• For more on the ALCS report, see page 60

with WHSmith and Kobo. This is the first time a publisher, a high street bookseller and an ebook supplier have worked together on such a project. First prize is publication with lots of editorial help and major book promotion, and there’s a Kobo ereader for second and third

Free houses for writers (but in Detroit) An American organisation, ’Write a House, is giving houses

away to writers. The house belongs to the writer forever, and all he or she has to do is live in it and engage with the community. Unfortunately this isn’t (yet!) a worldwide project – the house is situated in Detroit. Write a House describes this as ‘a new twist on the writer’s residency’ and they are now taking applications for 2015. See more at www.writeahouse.org. Cathy Bryant

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prize winners. Entrants will need to have a Kobo Writing Life account. They have until 14 July to submit a 500-word synopsis and first chapter of up to 5000 words. More details at http:// kobowritinglife.com/2015/04/14/ calling-all-romance-authors/ Allis Gordon

Teacher wins New Children’s Author Prize An English teacher at a ’school in Devon has won the

inaugural New Children’s Author Prize, organised by the National Literacy Trust and Bloomsbury. The prize was launched last year to raise money for the literacy charity. The entry fee for

the competition was £30 but the winner receives a £5000 advance from Bloomsbury. The contest attracted over 400 entries and raised more than £20,000. The book, Malkin Moonlight, is about a cat who is looking for his friend Roux who comes across a group of cats at a recycling centre and is soon involved in their fight with a rival gang. It will be published next year. Judge Rebecca McNally, publishing director at Bloomsbury Children’s, said the writing stood out for its flair and the book has ‘real warmth, humour and a strong sense of jeopardy’. Winner Emma Cox said: ‘This has been an amazing experience thus far and I am looking forward to so many things, but the highlight will be when I see a child

Writers’FORUM #164

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sitting in a school or a library quietly reading my own book. That, for me, will be a moment of pure magic.’

King gets Edgar writer Stephen King has ’wonHorror America’s top crime-writing

award for his serial killer thriller Mr Mercedes. The novel is about a retired policeman who is tormented by the perpetrator of a massacre he never managed to solve. The focus is on human rather than supernatural evil. The book beat titles by more traditional practitioners of crime writing including Ian Rankin, Stuart Neville and Karin Slaughter to be named best novel at the Edgar Awards in New York. The Edgars, named after Edgar Allan Poe, which are run by the Mystery Writers of America, have been running for over 60 years.

Ruth Rendell dies Well-known British crime ’writer Ruth Rendell has died

in London, aged 85, after being hospitalised by a serious stroke in January. Fellow writer Val McDermid said: ‘Ruth Rendell was unique. No one can equal her range or her accomplishment; no one has earned more respect from her fellow practitioners.’ Her debut, From Doon with Death, introduced the world to Inspector Wexford in 1964. She was the author of more than 60 novels and also wrote psychological thrillers as Barbara Vine. Rendell won prizes including the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in crime writing. She was made a peer in 1997. In 2013 she told the Guardian newspaper that she had no plans to retire. ‘It’s absolutely essential to my life. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t write,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it until I die, if I can. You don’t know, but probably.’

Hugh Scott is a Whitbread-winning author. He writes and illustrates for The Park Free Press

Nicolette Cassar White

every possible combination of letters.Now a fan in New York is creating a digital version of the library. It’s not a random generator that changes each time you visit, but a vast directory of files with each combination, so you can return to each one. Jonathan Basile has so far spent six months on the project and says it already has ‘more books than the universe has atoms’, although most of them will be meaningless twaddle. (So, rather like Amazon.) It can be found at http://libraryofbabel.info

Nicolette Cassar White

Monster call-out for horror submissions

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Four anthologies of horror fiction are calling for submissions until the end of June. Spectral Press (https://spectralpress. wordpress.com) want fiction of any length, though prefer 2000-8000 words. Pantheon Magazine (pantheonmag.com) are looking for dark fantasy and horror fiction submissions. They would like new spins on old monster tropes as well as all-new monsters. There are various themes to inspire writers who are interested in the forthcoming anthology from Forgotten Tomb Press,

ODD SPOT BY HUGH SCOTT

including supernatural horror and conspiracy horror, and details can be found at forgottentomb. wordpress.com. Finally, Fey publishing (feypublishing.com ) want the most disturbing horror stories imaginable. Let’s hope that writers can summon up some successful shivers in the June sunshine. Cathy Bryant

Infinite library opens Luis Borges’ 1940 tale ’TheJorge Library of Babel depicts a libary that houses an infinite number of books containing

Della Galton’s back at Swanwick Writers’ Forum’s agony aunt, ’prolifi c short story writer and

novelist Della Galton will be delighting the Swanwick crowd once again in August. Devotees of the UK’s – and possibly the world’s oldest – writers’ school have long benefited from courses run by Della and her informal advice and friendship in between times. This year, she will be an evening speaker and also a member of the ever-popular publishing panel. Full details are available at www. swanwickwritersschool.org.uk Maggie Cobbett (already gearing up for my 10th year at Swanwick!)

Send us your news and the best item each month wins a year’s subscription

want short news items for ’theseWepages, either researched directly

Having taken up cigar-smoking – as every great writer should – Derek sometimes had difficulty finding his laptop.

by you or sourced from press releases or publications and rewritten for us. In return you’ll get a byline and the best item each month wins a free subscription. This month’s winner is Nicolette Cassar White. Items should be under 200 words – the snappier the better. You can attach a good quality photo and please make sure stories about events are submitted in time. Importantly, you must be able to prove your story is true and where you found it. Writers’ Forum may edit any items submitted and if a story is covered by more than one writer we’ll choose the best version. Please send items to [email protected] You can cover any topic that will be useful, interesting or amusing to writers. The subject should be big enough to appeal to a national/ global readership although local news might still inspire or entertain writers in other regions. Get writing and good luck!


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Author interview

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Hard labour Australian novelist Venero Armanno also teaches creative writing at university and knows only too well the challenge facing his students. Here he talks to Glynis Scrivens

f you want to be a writer you have to write – a lot. Imagine a budding guitarist who picks up the guitar once a week. Or a kid with a dream to be a footballer, who doesn’t really play. You’d never take these people seriously. Same with writing – you have to be committed and stay committed. ‘So my advice is: stop thinking, get doing. Even if you’re crap for five to ten years. So what?’ Venero Armanno speaks from experience. He’s an award-winning author of novels, short stories and illustrated books for younger readers. He’s also a successful scriptwriter. Venero teaches creative writing at the University of Queensland where he’s won an award for Excellence in Teaching. Writing was the only thing he was good at during his school years. He started writing as a teenager. Ten unpublished novels bear testimony to his efforts at learning the craft. ‘Writers can need a lot of time to develop. In all honesty, I can say I started writing in 1978 and didn’t write a single decent thing until 1988, when a couple of my short stories started to show a bit of gold. So there were roughly 10 full novels behind that, then a 2000-word short story finally showed promise, and the next, and the next… Then 10 that were no good, then another that was OK. ‘That’s how it went for me, so why should I layer terrible expectations on to anyone else who has a dream but is only just starting out? Even now I think I’m back at the beginning. I feel like a 55-yearold man trying to get his not-very-good first novel published, and meeting brick walls and negativity at every turn.’ So what has kept him going? ‘Fear of failure, fear of ending up in a dead-end job, fear of suburbia; fear of never doing what I hoped to do. My rock band had failed, so I really was staring my own limitations in the face. I’d also worked in the public service and as a day labourer on building sites. That was when I decided to give writing my all. ‘The negative thoughts hang around all the time and you just have to deal with them. But hopefully when a new story strikes and the writing process begins, the idea of publishing, or not, becomes remote. You just have to go with the flow. ‘At the moment I’m into a big new novel, trying not to think what will happen if I spend another few years on it and it doesn’t get published. In the end, I know, I’ll just write another. You can fret or


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Author interview

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you can write. I think I do both. ‘I always think if a book’s good enough, it might find an audience. What I’d really hate to do is try to work out what people want to read and write to that formula.’ Success took persistence, a quality instilled in him by his father. ‘Every summer from the age of 13, I was a brick labourer. There’s nothing harder in Brisbane’s heat, sweat running off you and Sicilians swearing at you for not being fast enough. I hated every second but I learned the value of hard work. I also learned that writing, by comparison, is easy. You just have to dig in.’ Venero persisted until he found his voice. ‘The early novels were childish and influenced by whoever I was reading, from Stephen King to F Scott Fitzgerald to Graham Greene. One piece of advice many writers give is to try writing like your favourite authors until you find your own voice. That worked for me, though it was a laborious process. I had no help, no mentors, knew no writers. Gradually I found my own voice, and my own themes. ‘The early manuscripts were surface‑ level, containing the emotional content of a late teenager or someone in their early 20s. Well-meaning and earnest, but quite thin. Continuing to write helped me find better resonance in my work. This wasn’t conscious, it just evolved over years. ‘There was also the thing of learning what a story really is. Most of my early manuscripts tended to work as set-pieces and lacked real narrative structure.’ Even though new books started to be published in quick succession after 1991, a major turning point for Venero came in 1995 when the Australia Council gave him a six-month residency in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts. ‘Someone warned me that novelist Tim Winton ran back to Perth screaming after only two weeks in that cell-like studio. No TV, no radio, tiny refrigerator, only the barest essentials. But to me it wasn’t a cell, it was a window to freedom. Just me, pen and paper. I wrote my eyeballs out. I’d wake at five, make coffee and write. I’d write until two in the afternoon and then walk until 10pm. ‘I really wanted to be on my own. I come from a long line of Sicilian men who are far more comfortable in a field on their own with their stock or produce… It’s no wonder I live on three acres now and, aside from work, rarely speak to anyone! ‘I returned to Paris for writing stints in 1997 and 1999 and over that period wrote

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I was a brick labourer. Writing, by comparison, is easy or finished several novels – Firehead, The Volcano, Strange Rain, My Beautiful Friend, some stories and a lot of editing. It was such a fruitful time. ‘The power often went and I’d write by natural sunlight or candles. Over time, as each candle wore down, I ended up creating a sort of giant candle on the floor, from which I’d light the next and the next. ‘My favourite writing time was morning; that wonderful semi-dream state you’re still in at five or six o’clock. Later I’d have a few thousand words and not remember writing them, like they’d just appeared. ‘I tried it again in 2005 but by then I was married and we had a baby. After two or three weeks I came home. My time of living alone feeding my own writing needs was over. I’d learned that for me family comes first. But I did spend 10 days at an apartment in Kingscliff, a resort in New South Wales, to finish The Dirty Beat.’ Venero has found his themes. Sometimes his themes have found him. Candle Life is based on a character he met in Paris. ‘He wore broken glasses, broken shoes tied together with string, his red hair was wild like a clown’s, his tattered clothes stank, and his head looked like it had been cracked open and hadn’t repaired properly. He carried a copy of the New York Times, three weeks out of date. He told me this

crazy story about being forced to live in the quays, and even underground, because he’d lost everything. ‘Later I discovered the hotel room he sometimes slept in was a shrine to his mother, which he guarded every night with a shotgun. Before I could run away, he said, “Please, young man, help me? I’m a writer and in trouble.” ‘Writers often commence a project with some instinct, a theme they want to explore, hopefully some sense of character, and here all of these elements had simply walked up to me in the street and tapped me on the shoulder. Moments like this in life make you wonder what brought the person to that moment.’ It took Venero seven years to write Candle Life. ‘Sometimes you just have to let it sit for a while. Sometimes those are the books that work out best.’ Similarly The Volcano took 10 years to write but it won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Australian Fiction Book in 2002. Since then, finding time to write has become increasingly challenging. ‘The main thing was, and remains, persistence. Now I write around everything else I have to do.’ And there are still rejections. ‘I’ve never been a bestselling author, so every new novel is a new test. After Black Mountain I wrote two novels that haven’t found homes yet. It’s a strange feeling but I’ve a significant enough background in rejection and acceptance to know you need to persist and move on. I was particularly excited about one book but the feedback was unanimous – it doesn’t work. So I went back to the drawing board with it and reshaped it from a large novel to a 60,000‑word one called Crystal Girl. It’s much better but hasn’t found a home.’ What’s his final piece of advice? ‘Trust your writing process. When you start a book you think you know what’s going to happen, but it adopts a life of its own. One of the hardest things to do is to take yourself out of the equation and allow the story to tell itself. Graham Greene compared writing with a plane on a runway. There’s a long run-up, then somewhere the book takes off. You’re the passenger then, not the pilot. ‘The book I’m writing at the moment is going into its own territory. I thought I knew what it’s about, but one of the major characters has definitely taken the reins. I’m happily following wherever the hell she wants to take me.’ • Venero is published by Random House and the University of Queensland Press


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Cachet Travel

Creative Writing with Lesley Cookman Writing Commercial Fiction

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Lesley Cookman is the author of the best-selling Libby Sarjeant Mystery series. The 15th novel in the series, Murder in the Blood, is due to be published this spring and is in fact set in a village on the Turkish coast, where Libby and her friends are taking a well-earned holiday! Although best known as a crime writer, Lesley’s wealth of life experience enables her to advise and coach aspiring writers in a wide variety of genres. The image of an author in their peaceful and scenic writer’s retreat, glancing up from their typewriter to gaze across the sea, may be a cliché, but few would dispute that creativity needs the right environment to thrive and that travel to foreign shores can be a rich source of inspiration. So when Lesley Cookman suggested that our exclusive Mandarin Boutique Hotel would make an ideal venue for a creative writing holiday, we needed little persuasion. Its tranquil location, tucked away in the rural hills above the Lycian Coast, will help you to stay focused, whilst the beautiful gardens and enticing swimming pool are perfect for times of relaxation and contemplation.

7-night holiday Dates: 5 - 12 October 2015 Minimum/Maximum Group Size: 6-10 people For full details visit: www.cachet-travel.co.uk/d/page-turkey-writing.html or call 020 8847 8700

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READER LETTERS

Writers CIRCLE

Your news and views, writing tips and funny stories RNA TEST

PARK ’N’ WRITE In his letter ‘Warm PRIZE Wishes’ (issue #163) LETTER Stephen Poxon asked: ‘Where is the best place to write?’ As I live in a small, dark basement flat I tend to head outdoors to write. I have my favourite beauty spots to

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MORE SPACES Here are a few suggestions for Stephen Poxon, which I hope will be of use: ■ Use the kitchen table (one of your preferred areas) and change your eating or writing times so they don’t clash. ■ Write in bed. Sit up and use your headboard as a back rest so you are comfy and can write. ■ When it is warm, either sit outside on a chair and write, or find a park bench and write. ■ Find a library to write in when it is cold or wet. ■ If you have friends or relations who are going away and need flowers watering, fish feeding etc, then volunteer. You’ll have a quiet environment to work in and they’ll be glad of a house-sitter. Cindy Shanks, Todmorden, Lancs

Writers FORUM Pin up this calendar to plan and record your writing work and then analyse your progress at the end of the month

I’m doing one of three things: I’m writing. I’m staring out the window. Or I’m writhing on the floor

April 2015 Mon

Tue

Wed

................................................................................................................................................. ■ No of words of my book I will write each day/week ........................................................... Willis Hall (1929) Ram Dass (1931)

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■ Poems written/submitted ...............................................................................................

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■ Feature ideas sent out ....................................................................................................................................

■ Agents approached ..........................................................................................................

Thu

Edgar Wallace (1875) Milan Kundera (1929)

■ Topics or ideas researched ...........................................................................................

■ Stories written/submitted .............................................................................................

Thomas Harris

Samuel Beckett (1906) Seamus Heaney (1939) Christopher Hitchens (1949)

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William Wordsworth (1770)

Erich von Däniken (1935) Bruce Sterling (1954)

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Fri

Hans Christian Andersen (1805) Émile Zola (1840) Sue Townsend (1946)

James Herbert (1943) Barbara Kingsolver (1955)

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Henry James (1843) Jeffrey Archer (1940) Benjamin Zephaniah (1958)

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821)

Kingsley Amis (1922)

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Writers’ Forum #163 on sale

■ Courses/workshops/events attended ........................................................................

■ New things tried ..............................................................................................................

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Sebastian Faulks (1953)

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Charlotte Brontë (1816) John Mortimer (1923) Alistair MacLean (1922)

■ Books read .........................................................................................................................

20 CHART SUCCESS ■ Writing-related income and expenditure

...........................................................

............................................................. Total earnt: ...........................Total spent: ...........................

Edward Gibbon (1737) Cecil Day-Lewis (1904) Edwin Morgan (1920) Russell T Davies (1963)

Harper Lee (1926) Terry Pratchett (1948) Ian Rankin (1960)

■ Sum up your writing month in one word ................................................................

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27 28 How mistaken was I? Every month I’ve looked at the Achievement Chart in your centre pages and thought what a waste of space it was. Then last month I decided to try it out and – phew! What a lot of work I got through. After filling in the first square I couldn’t bear to leave a single one empty for the remainder of the month. By 30 April every square listed an achievement, and more work and words were produced than I’ve ever managed before. Apologies for thinking ‘waste of space’. The Achievement Chart is now a firm favourite. Steffie Dennis, via email

MOANER GEEZER Charles Knightley’s letter (Men’s Moan, issue #163) is a common point I hear from many of my writing students. When they analyse a magazine and see all the articles are written by women, they wrongly assume the editor only uses women writers. My advice to them is always the same: send the editor some suitable material or an appropriate pitch. An editor can’t publish by men if they don’t

born 11 April 1940

Ken Robbins

It’s been quite a couple of years. Having joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme in January 2013, I raced to finish my work by the August deadline. Encouraged by the feedback I received, I made the suggested changes and sent my ‘baby’ on its way. With barely a pause for breath I was contracted to a publisher and my book, Safe Harbour, became a contender for the prestigious Joan Hessayon Award. The winner will be announced on 21 May at the RNA Summer Party. Back-pedal a bit and I had a ‘one2one’ with agent Lisa Eveleigh at the 2014 RNA Conference and I am now represented by the Richford Becklow Literary Agency. Not only that, but my second book, Honey Bun, is now available on Amazon as a paperback and an ebook. At the Summer Party I shall be juggling a glass in one hand and a canape in the other, a skill I have almost honed at such events but one which I am happy to keep practising. My greatest thrill, though, will be standing in the line-up with the other contenders, while at the same time praying I haven’t spilled wine down the front of my dress. Natalie Kleinman, London SE3

sit in to write short poems and prose, but the British weather is not always favourable. I end up sheltering in a café or two, which is useful for observing people who go on to inform my characters and stories, but the amount I spend on coffee can be alarming. I’ve learned to take a flask and find a car park to sit in, preferably at a supermarket with public toilets. This way I get a comfy seat in my car, the dashboard and passenger seat double as my office space, it’s peaceful and has minimal distractions but still has plenty of passing foot traffic for me to use as inspiration for my characters. Plus I can pick up dinner on the way home. Do other readers write in strange places? Samantha Kirkby, Poole, Dorset

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Henry Fielding (1707) Louise Glück (1943) Vladimir Nabokov (1899)

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William Shakespeare (1564) Margaret Kennedy (1896)

Sat

Washington Irving (1783) Reginald Hill (1936)

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Lewis Wallace (1827) Paul Theroux (1941)

Karen Blixen (1885) Penelope Lively (1933) Nick Hornby (1957)

Sun

Maya Angelou (1928) Dan Simmons (1948)

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Robert Bloch (1917) Arthur Hailey (1920)

Thomas Harris (1940) Jeremy Clarkson (1960)

Joy Davidman (1915)

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Alan Ayckbourn (1939) Tom Clancy (1947) Scott Turow (1949)

Sven Hassel (1917)

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Not a waste 17of space! 18 19

Anthony Trollope (1815) Sue Grafton (1940)

Walter de la Mare (1873) Ted Kooser (1939)

Anita Loos (1889)

22 23 25 26 submit anything in24the first place. The May issue of Woman’s 29 Fiction 30 Special 1 has 220 3 Weekly stories, 19 written by women and one by a man: me. I don’t know what the ratio of female to male short story writers is (particularly for the women’s magazine market), but it’s probably greater than 19 to 1. But my point is this: I was only published in a female-dominated publication because I sat down and wrote something. So Charles, stop moaning and start submitting! Simon Whaley, Church Stretton, Shrops

Robert J Sawyer (1960)

Larry Niven (1938) John Boyne (1971)

AMAZON ANTIS As a man who has won prizes in your short story competition, I’d be the last to agree with Charles Knightley about female bias in Writers’ Forum. But it fired me up about another bias – against self-publication on Amazon. The prejudice takes several forms, including reluctance on the part of some bookshops to stock Amazon titles, and of local festivals to allow open discussion of the topic. I have offered festivals talks on the successful self-publication of my first novel, Wings Over


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Just for fun

WIN

a year’s subscription!

The writer of the prize letter each month will win a year’s subscription to the magazine. Please make sure that you include your full name and address in your email. Write to [email protected]

Oh dear, it looks like Michelle Paver was having a bad writing day. Can you spot the 20 errors in this ‘first draft’ of Dark Matter?

I’ve seen it.

Until two years ago I commuted to London from Dorset. The daily journey meant five hours to write! At first it was difficult but in-ear headphones deadened most of the bustle around me. I was soon unhampered by anything the commute could throw at me, from crying babies to my seat being knocked, and from loud mobile phone conversations to the clicketyclack of the train on the tracks. Only one thing could break my stride – the persistent, rhythmic sniffer. Then I began working from home and found the silence sucked dry all creativity. After a couple of weeks of this I contemplated putting together a soundtrack of train noises. Fortunately I didn’t have to indulge such ridiculous notions. I experimented with classical and instrumental music playing quietly

comfort zone A lot writing advice seems to focus on writing what you know. What I know well is writing in the third person and past tense, so when the flash competition last month required a first-person account written in the present, I thought I had no chance. Never one to turn down a challenge I entered anyway – and came runner-up! So my advice is to jump outside of your comfort zone every now and again. You won’t learn anything new if you always stick to what you know. Sara Newnes, Newport

EMail mystery I have been submitting letters to magazines for years, mostly photos of my cat and comments on TV shows. But now that letters have to be submitted by email I find that magazines often forget to pay for the submissions they publish. It is so embarrassing having to remind them. Recently, two months after being published by the Daily Mirror, I chased them up, and they only sent me £5 instead of the £25 it said beside the piece of mine they published. Could this be because of email? It never happened when I used the post. Delia Hume, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear

Writing the words makes me break out in a cold sweat. But I have to set it down. I have too make sense of it. The sky cleared just before noon, so we got our last site of the sun after all. It was Gus’s turn to take the readings at the stevenson screen but, I went with him to watch the Sun rise and set – which by now is pretty much the same thing. Algie stays inside. She said it would spook him to see it go. This time, no one suggested a ceremoniel whiskey. Twilight. Behind the bird cliff’s, the red glow of dawn, but to the West it was night: the cold glimmer of star. The black bones of the mountains jutted through the snow. On the shore, the whale ribs glinted with frost, and the rocks sloping down to the sea was white and smooth. The water was dark purple, vivid and strange. Because of the cliffs, we could’nt see much. We saw the sky turn bloody and enflamed as the sun struggled to rise. We saw a slither of fire. An abortive dawn. The sun sank back defeated. Gone I shut my eyes and it was still there, blazing behind my eyelid. I opened them. Gone. All that remained was a crimson glow. ‘So that’s that’, Gus said quitely. Four months without the sun. It doesn’t seem real. In the doghouse, the dogs begin to howl. Sent in by Tracey Glasspool, from Devon, who wins £25 11 glimmer of stars (plural). 12 rocks… were white (plural). 13 we couldn’t (misplaced apostrophe). 14 bloody and inflamed (spelling). 15 sliver of fire (wrong word). 16 Gone. (missing full stop). 17 my eyelids (plural). 18 that’s that,’ (misplaced comma). 19 said quietly (spelling). 20 dogs began to (wrong tense).

Persistent distractions

in the background, and in the end was able to work in total silence. But I had come close to employing someone to knock my seat and spill tea on me – with the proviso that persistent sniffers need not apply. Christopher Mendham, Walkford, Dorset

Corrections 1 have to make (wrong word). 2 last sight of (spelling). 3 Stevenson (proper name). 4 screen, but (misplaced comma). 5 watch the sun rise (no cap). 6 Algie stayed inside (wrong tense). 7 He said it would (wrong pronoun). 8 ceremonial (spelling). 9 the bird cliffs (no apostrophe). 10 to the west (no capital needed).

Summer. It’s a subject I know to be of interest to many who attend such events, but the first mention of Amazon and the shutters come down. Had I self-published through any other medium, I think I may have met with a more positive response. I understand some of the prejudices, but Amazon offers hope for many of us who, for whatever reason, have been unable to break into the mainstream, or can’t afford other self-publishing outlets. People should be able to hear about the process, and some festival organisers are denying them the opportunity. Ron Powell, Barry Island

£25

Could you ruin a passage from a modern novel? Send your error-ridden First Draft (around 250 words), and the 20 solutions, to [email protected] Please note that entries are accepted via email only. We pay £25 for the best published.


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FIRST STEPS

GET STARTED

Make writing pay

Douglas McPherson shows you how to earn a living from words

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here’s a saying in the world of musical theatre: you can make a killing but you can’t make a living. It often looks that way in all fields of writing. Topping the list of the world’s highest earning authors, for example, James Patterson trousered $90 million last year, while Dan Brown picked up $28 million in second place. You won’t see such numbers on the tax return of the average writer, however. A survey by the Author Licensing and Collecting Society claims that the median income among professional

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you can expect to make £100 to £400 per article. Daily newspapers will pay between £200 and £500 (scoops and exclusives command more) while a feature in a weekend supplement will earn a healthy £800 to £1000-plus. The higher fees are harder to achieve with frequency, but are available on an occasional basis to any writer with the right idea and relevant expertise, while lower payers compensate with more regular work – you can become de facto staff and contribute to every issue. Review fees from £10 to £100 can add up to a useful extra income, while the associated freebies act as an income multiplier, saving you the need to spend on DVDs, theatre and concert tickets, holidays and cars etc. authors in the UK was £11,000 in 2013 – and the median income for all writers was £4000. That’s just a third of the £16,850 that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says is required to maintain the minimum standard of living. So should we all go and work in a supermarket? Or should writing be regarded as akin to playing the lottery: a guilty indulgence that will only pay off if we get one-in-amillion lucky? The truth is that it’s perfectly possible to make a comfortable living as a writer without being a famous bestseller. So this

month we’ll look at planning a career that will let you give up your day job as soon as possible.

Features

Despite the proliferation of unpaid writing opportunities online, newsagents’ shelves remain full of print titles that make journalism the largest paying market for writers. It’s also the most accessible. If you pitch good ideas and can write, editors at every level will buy your work with no regard to your age, background or education. For most newsstand mags,

Magazine fiction

It’s difficult to make a living from women’s magazine fiction alone. Lower-end titles pay £50 to £100 per story. At the top, expect £300 to £500. The problem is that sales are limited by the huge number of writers chasing the very few magazines that still publish fiction. Waiting times for a decision are horrendous and you invariably have to write your story on spec, with no guarantee of acceptance whatever your track record. Despite the drawbacks, writing for women’s mags can be an enjoyable creative


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Regard writing a non-fiction book as a career booster rather than a direct income source outlet, provide a reasonable second income and be a stepping stone to a book deal.

Serials

Writing serials for women’s magazines makes more sense financially. Although the market is even smaller, serials pay more per episode than individual stories and it’s easier to write several parts of one story than as many individual tales. You can also sell a serial on the strength of an idea, or a short sample plus synopsis, meaning a guarantee of being paid for your work.

Novels

The £300 that My Weekly pays for Pocket Novels may seem derisory for 50,000 words written on spec. But you can re-sell to large-print publisher Ulverscroft for a further £400 and also pick up additional earnings from library borrowing (expect around £100 per title per annum). That makes a

Pocket Novel a somewhat better prospect than it sounds when compared to advances as low as £500 that are often paid by mainstream publishers to first-time authors. The reason series detectives are so popular, and why ‘mid-list’ authors with mainstream publishing deals are so prolific, is that you need the royalties and PLR (Public Lending Rights) income from a large backlist to add up to reasonable earnings in any one year.

Non-fiction books

Unless you’re a celebrity in your field, and ideally on TV, advances for non-fiction books also tend to be low. Around £1500 is common for a first-time author. And whenever you’re negotiating an offer bear in mind that most books sell in tiny numbers, so what you get upfront will often be all you’ll ever see. Writing a book will, however, give you that all-important

TRICKS OF THE TRADE Douglas shares writing tips he’s learned through experience

#5 It’s easier to get a raise for your first article than your second As I’ve shown on these pages, the fees paid by magazines and newspapers vary enormously. Less obvious is that many will pay different writers different amounts – and the first figure they offer may not be as much as they could pay. There are also instances where the work involved in a short article is disproportionate to the standard rate per word. So whenever you sell an article to a new market, consider if the amount they’re offering sounds reasonable. Although it may feel presumptuous, you have a much better chance of negotiating a higher fee for your first article than for your second or third, once your rate has been set in stone. Ask low payers to match what you get elsewhere. Or try asking for 50 per cent more and they may come up by 25 per cent. ■ If you have a question about getting started as a writer, please email Douglas at [email protected]

TAKE THE STEP expert status when it comes to selling feature articles, especially to the bigger papers and magazines. It’s possible to earn several times your advance from related articles, so regard writing a book as a career booster rather than a direct income source.

Talks

Many authors supplement writing income with associated work such as tutoring writing workshops and giving talks. Author appearances in schools can pay £150 to £1000. Other groups such as the Women’s Institute and local societies will pay less (£20 to £50, or just expenses) but you will have the opportunity to sell your books to the audience. If you buy them at cost price from your publisher, that means a profit of £6 or £7 per book instead of a royalty of £1. Not every writer wants to be a travelling book salesperson, but those that do often make more from direct sales than through bookshops or online.

Portfolio career

If you want to make a living from writing, my advice is simple: concentrate on articles. Three or four features a week, across a variety of markets, will yield an above-average annual income and is easily achievable, as long as you are prepared to approach it as a full-time job. The beauty of feature writing is that you don’t have to give up your dreams of bestselling fiction. The flexibility of freelance journalism will give you the time to write short stories or work on a novel whenever you wish. That way, you’re still in with a chance of winning the literary lottery and joining JK Rowling in the millionaire’s club. In the meantime, if you’re getting paid to write all day... well, you’re already winning, aren’t you?

Lesson 1 The most feasible way of making a living from words is by writing articles for magazines and newspapers. Lesson 2 Paying the bills with freelance journalism is the ideal base from which to branch out into short stories and novels. Homework If you’ve yet to write an article, think of the subjects you’d most like to write about, or could write about most knowledgeably, be it hobbies or sport, jobs, animals, or issues such as parenting or an illness. Seek out some magazines devoted to those subjects or that cover them on a regular basis – you may already read such a mag. Go through a few issues and ask yourself which articles you could have written, or what you could write that would fit in with the existing content. If you’re already selling articles, look outside your comfort zone for an idea you could pitch to your dream market. Then get pitching… and earning! • Douglas McPherson’s non-fiction book Circus Mania is now available in an Amazon Kindle edition.


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PROMOTION

HOW TO TAKE AN Author Photo

5 Avoid author props Postbox eats author’s hand! Steer clear of authorial clichés such as keyboards, notepads and pens, or wine glasses. Author photos are about you, not props (unless it’s a great trademark hat).

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Rob Wilkins

You might hate having your photo taken but at some point a publisher will ask for a head shot. Simon Whaley puts on a brave face to show how

1 Terry Pratchett’s official author photo A good author photo shows that you’re friendly, approachable and human. Here, there’s little to distract attention from Terry’s face, even though he’s wearing his trademark hat.

2 Avoid book promotion Avoid photos that promote specific books – or that try to promote too many. If you want to avoid having to keep updating your photo, a simple head and shoulders pose will work for many different projects.

6 Holiday faux pas Blurred holiday snaps are unprofessional (it was a good night, though), as are cropped photos with a stranger’s arm round your neck. Author photos are a professional business tool.

7 Look the reader in the eye The point is to engage with the reader. Gazing straight down the camera lens conveys confidence and respect. Looking elsewhere suggests you’re more interested in something else.


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PERFECT for WRITING RETREATS The Mount

Durlston, Swanage

3 Clutter-free composition Think about your environment. Plain, simple backgrounds work best. There may be skill in balancing a hanging basket of daffodils on top of your head, but it won’t sell books.

4 Avoid awkward poses When it comes to posing, less is more. Don’t know what to do with your hands? Don’t have them in your photo. A head and shoulders pose works best.

Large reception areas for group workshops and socialising

Six bedrooms with twin or kingsize beds and writing desks

8 Avoid low res Magazines print at 300 dots per inch and need high‑resolution images. Internet images are only 72dpi, so become pixelated and unusable. A file size of at least 1Mb offers editors flexibility.

9 Don’t forget to smile A simple high‑res head and shoulders photo, with no hands, props or poses, creates an engaging, professional and multi-purpose image. And if you can manage a smile, even better!

(No authors, postboxes or hanging baskets were harmed in the making of this feature.)

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Surrounded by a private garden and Purbeck’s inspirational Jurassic Coast scenery To book The Mount for your writing group, please visit www.themountswanage.co.uk

13/05/2015 11:34:56

Writing Exercise

Styling your story Tone, tense, viewpoint she felt like screaming. Of all the rotten luck – all her favourite people gone over a few months! First the split with boyfriend Darren, then Gran moving out, now Anna going… The tone in Take a Break is more ‘streetwise’; the stories often told in a dramatic way, with lots of sparkling direct dialogue. The fiction in both magazines is equally readable but the style is very different.

Viewpoint

The tone of the fiction in that magazine is often quite reflective; the main problem emerging in a subtle way. Had I aimed the story at Take a Break Fiction Special, I would have given it a more direct feel – something like this:

If you tell your story through one particular character’s viewpoint all the way through, his or her attitude will determine that story’s tone. Most editors of commercial magazines prefer their short stories written from one viewpoint, so that the reader can identify with that person all the way through. If you tell your story through the eyes of 80-year-old Betty, mugged on her way to the shops, the tone will need to be far more emotional than if you’d told it from the thug’s angle. Getting right into someone’s mind and showing everything from his or her perspective – their emotions, their reactions, and so on – is bound to affect the style of the story. If you use the first-person viewpoint, rather than the third, the reader will feel even more closely involved with that character. First person always seems more intimate than third:

‘Jake’s landed a new job, miles away – in Sussex. So we’ll be off soon.’ Louise grinned. ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you, Anna?’ Suddenly struck dumb, Anna stared at her friend. ‘No, I won’t!’

Looking around at the other candidates, I wanted to walk out. How come they all looked so confident? Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead and I fidgeted nervously.

Before you begin a story, think about how you want it to make your readers feel, says Barbara Dynes

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one is the overall feel of your story, article or novel and it’s important. Is it to be a light, possibly humorous read, or will you adopt a deeper, more reflective approach? In a novel of around 100,000 words, you have space and time to change mood and style, but there will still be an overall ‘feel’. For instance, if you are writing in the chic-lit genre, you’ll need a light, bright, humorous tone; for a thriller, you’ll strive for a darker, more on-edge slant. A short story for a woman’s magazine will differ greatly in tone from one written for a literary publication, as will an article on engineering compared with one for a retirement magazine. One of the most important aspects of tone, of course, is your

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market. Who are you writing for? Give your readership (and the editors/publishers) some thought before you start to write. Take women’s magazines: the approach you need to suit a short story in People’s Friend would not do for Take a Break Fiction Feast. This is the opening of a story I’ve just sold to People’s Friend: ‘So we’ll be moving pretty soon. Jake can’t wait to start his new gardening job, having been out of work for so long.’ Louise touched Anna’s hand. ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you, Anna?’ As though in a trance, Anna put down her coffee cup and gazed at her friend. The noise and bustle of the café seemed to have faded into the background. Probably through shock on hearing Louise’s

announcement, Anna decided. What a blow! Two more people vanishing from her life, all in the space of a few months. First, her own relationship with boyfriend Darren had ended – albeit by mutual consent – then Gran had moved out…


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Writers’FORUM

EXERCISE You get more ‘buzz’ – but in a longer story present tense can feel claustrophobic

The overall feel

A

Fill in the following charts for each of these women’s magazine short story openings. First decide on a market for each, then consider the tone, viewpoint and tense.

1 A story of around 1500 words:

Put that in the third person and you’ll see that it distances the reader a little more: Looking around at the other candidates, he felt like walking out. How come they all looked so confident? Beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead, he fidgeted nervously. Yet first person is restricting – nothing can be revealed that the ‘I’ doesn’t experience. There is no right or wrong way. A lot depends on the storyline and the tone you want to adopt. Some books, such as romances, work better from just one viewpoint throughout, others benefit from frequent changes. A few novelists even switch from third to first person and back. But there will always be a reason why the author changes viewpoint. It is rarely done just for effect.

Tense Past or present? Usually the tense will come instinctively to you as you write, suiting the content. But, again, your intended market has to be considered. Past tense is ‘the norm’ for short stories and favoured by most editors. Yet present can be very effective, albeit it will change the tone considerably. Present tense gives a more urgent ‘feel’, it’s more immediate and can work well for a short, snappy story – especially one covering a short space of time. Also, emotional or extremely tense situations can benefit by its use. Here’s an example in the past tense: I was suddenly wide awake. What was that? Someone was moving

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about downstairs! Petrified, I got out of bed and pulled on my dressing gown. My heart hammered as I opened the door. Example (present tense):

The story centres round Emma, who is seeing Tom, a widower. They get on very well, but his eight-year-old daughter, Suzie, won’t accept Emma in her father’s life. At Emma’s house, Suzie has a tantrum, breaking a precious ornament. Emma tells Tom the relationship must end… Target magazine

Overall tone

Viewpoint character

1st or 3rd person?

Past tense or present?

I’m suddenly wide awake. What was that? Someone moving about downstairs! Petrified, I get out of bed and pull on my dressing gown. My heart hammers as I open the door. Somehow you get more ‘buzz’ from that second version. Yet using the present tense undeniably has its drawbacks. In a longer story or, indeed, a novel, it can get irritating and feel claustrophobic unless especially well done. In the Guardian a few years ago, author Philip Pullman called the use of the present tense ‘an abdication of narrative responsibility’, adding that he felt the storyteller should ‘take charge of the story’ and give a broader account of what, where and when events occurred. That, of course, is difficult to do when using the present tense. So, as with the first person, it can be too restricting. Whatever your own view, the point is to think about the tone and ‘feel’ you wish to create before you begin to write, and always bear your market in mind. Out of that tone will emerge your own unique style.

Barbara Dynes’ latest book, Masterclasses in Creative Writing, is published by Constable & Robinson at £9.99

2 A 1000-word story told mostly in dialogue: Louise, a divorcee living with a new boyfriend, is furious when her ex-husband, Dave, does not turn up to pick up their two sons. She takes them round to his place herself and finds him in bed with his current girlfriend. Louise screams at him. Then Dave casually informs her that he is moving to France with the girl. There is a terrible row… Target magazine

B

Overall tone

Viewpoint character

1st or 3rd person?

Past tense or present?

That last novel or story you enjoyed: reread it, this time for study purposes. Did the tone and tense suit the content? What was the reason for any change of viewpoint? Might the story have worked better if written in the first (or third) person? Taking the market into consideration, would you have written it differently?

Notes

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Fiction MARKET

InsideSTORY

Douglas McPherson explains why he chose an unusual structure for a My Weekly story about a country singer

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’ve heard it said that experimenting with form and structure is the preserve of the new writer. That’s when you want to pull all the toys out of the box: tales told in letters, emails and diary entries; plots unfolding in reverse order; spoofs and pastiches. It’s by playing with different styles and techniques that you learn and find your own voice. As you mature as a writer, the theory goes, you’re more likely to trust in the power of your story and tell it in the most straightforward way. Perhaps as you gain experience – of life, as well as writing – you simply have more substance to share and less need to dazzle with gimmicks. There are times, however, when an unusual structure can be the making of a story. That was the case with Song from the Heart, a My Weekly story that just wouldn’t come together until I decided to try something I’d never done before.

Backstory

The writers I’ve always admired the most are country song writers, especially the classic storytellers like Tom T Hall who conjure their characters, plots and settings so visually and economically that the term in Nashville is ‘three-minute movie’. Hall’s Harper Valley PTA, a hit for Jeannie C Riley, for example, includes more characters and social commentary than most writers could cram into a novel. Not only that, you can dance to it! (Unlike James T Kirk, incidentally, Hall’s middle ‘T’ doesn’t stand for Tiberius. He

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I imagined a succession of characters coming into the café one by one. But the setting felt stagey added the initial to make his name more memorable and when asked what it stood for, he’d say ‘Talent!’) Today’s country music has changed a lot in style and themes but, to me, its depiction of rural America remains enviably sharp. Last summer I was listening to a lot of ‘Bro Country’, a rap-influenced sub-genre about young country folks who, living too far from nightclubs, have what they call tailgate parties out in the boondocks. They load their pick-up trucks with beer, congregate at a moonlit lakeside, crank up the music and dance in the headlight beams or smooch on their tailgates. It was a totally different culture to my own, but one rendered so vividly in various lyrics that I felt the urge to write a story set in that world. I hankered to spin a yarn baked in the warmth of south Georgia sunshine and full of all the current country song tropes – from ‘hot honeys’ in skimpy shorts to skinny-dipping in a lake, driving a pick-up down a dusty road and kickin’ back with a cold one in a ‘koozy’, which is a thermal sleeve for holding a chilled beer can. The question was, where to begin?

Inspiration

One of my favourite country images was of the water tower

where lovers spray-paint their names for the surrounding area to see. That gave me a mental picture from which my story sprang: Kasey, a southern gal in Daisy Duke cut-off denim shorts and straw cowboy hat pulls up in her open-top jeep outside the U Need It We Got It general store and café, where she works. And there on the side of the water tower which overshadows the store she sees a piece of graffiti that mortifies her: Marshall ♥ Kasey. Marshall is the richest, most handsome bachelor in the county. Kasey has only been to one tailgate party with him. They’ve barely kissed, but in her part of the world, linking names on the water tower is akin to announcing an engagement in the local paper. That’s not what Kasey wants because she’s secretly in love with her childhood friend Cole, who works next door in the Ammo ’n’ Bait store. Knowing the whole town will be talking, she storms into the café and vents at an older, blowsier co-worker who I decided to call Darlene. From there, I imagined a succession of other characters coming into the café one by one: Cole, who Kasey feels too awkward to face; Kasey’s mom, an over-powering southern belle who’s already talking wedding dresses and looking

forward to being related to the rich folks on the hill; ShirleyAnne, the former prom queen and Marshall’s regular date, who’s after Kasey’s blood; and finally the cocksure Marshall himselfs.

Second thoughts

There was a lot I liked about that scenario – mostly the characters – but a lot I didn’t like, which stopped me writing it. The static café setting and procession of entrances (I could hear the jangle of the bell above the door every time someone came in), felt very stagey, like the script for an episode of Happy Days. It would also be dialogueheavy, which is not a bad thing for magazine fiction, but with so many characters it would eat up a couple of thousand words very quickly. We’d probably never get out of the cafe, which suddenly felt very claustrophobic when I wanted to write about the lake and the heat haze on a sun-baked road… the wider sweep of southern life. Worse, a lot of the dialogue would be filling in backstory, which would clog up the narrative. By then, I’d decided Kasey and Cole had been childhood friends and nerdy outsiders at a high school dominated by American football and cheerleading. Kasey, who wore glasses and a brace on her teeth, and the unsporty Cole, had been nicknamed Bucktooth and Loser by Shirley-Anne and Marshall who were the glamorous popular kids. Kasey was a late bloomer, which was why being belatedly


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13/05/2015 11:37:15

Living In Harmony

FIRST CLASS FICTION

song from the

heart

What’s a country girl to do when life is good… or when it turns bad? Write a song...

By Julia Douglas

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called the first song on the album Small Town Girl because that’s what I am. I was raised in South Georgia in a l’l biddy place called Butcher’s Fork. It’s not really even a town – just a fork in the road where the hunters and fishermen turn off down the dirt track through the woods to the lake. On one side of the street there’s a Feed ‘n’ Seed depot and Ned’s filling station. On the other there’s the Ammo ’n’ Bait store. That’s where Cole, who I wrote the song with, used to work. Next to that is the U Need It We Got It general store and café, where I worked. ’Part from that, there’s a line of blue, yellow and white bungalows, a tworoom school and a little clapboard church where just about everybody within a five-mile radius was christened, married and eventually buried in the shade of the magnolia trees out the back. Like I say in the song, it’s a place where time moves slow and gossip moves fast. The next song, Chasin’ Fireflies, is a bluegrass tune about growing up in

JULIA’S LATEST NOVEL Polka Dot Dreams is available to download from Amazon or borrow from your local library.

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Butcher’s Fork with my buddy Cole. The girls in school teased me for having a boyfriend but of course he was nothing of the sort – we were nine or ten years old. Every day after class, he’d carry my books. I lived a quarter mile north of Butcher’s Fork and he’d walk home with me before carrying on another quarter mile to his house. At weekends and all summer we’d chase fireflies in the woods, fish in the creek and swim in the lake. We didn’t need a towel – the Georgia sun would dry you. Yep, Butcher’s Fork was a wonderful place to be a kid. It was only when I hit

my teens that it lost its shine. Heartbreak High is about the school we went to when we got a little older. It was five miles south in Clayton. We’d go on a yellow bus – and I hated every day I was there. I must have been a disappointment to my mom and dad; they always said their high school years were the happiest of their lives. They wanted to relive all that through me. But then, they’d been the popular kids. Dad was captain of the football team. Mom was chief cheerleader, and Clayton High was the kind of school where if you weren’t on the team or

cheering it, you weren’t anybody. I was a skinny kid with glasses and a brace on my teeth. I had about as much chance of being a cheerleader as Cole had of being a quarterback – he wasn’t sporty at all. Bucktooth and Loser, that’s what the other kids called us, and we were about the only friends each of us had. We should have dated, but we were both too nerdy to make a move. We could only sit on the sidelines and watch while the – how can I put this? – precociously developed Shirley-Anne romanced Marshall, the football hero. It was around then I began to write

songs. I’d sit on my back porch with Cole and his guitar and wish we were old enough to get out of town. Georgia Dust is a song I wrote about Ned who ran the filling station. He’d taken it over from his dad and it was an old-fashioned place with two rusty pumps shimmering in the heat haze. When I bought my first jeep I used to pull in for gas and he’d shuffle out in his bib overalls and ball-cap, face like leather. “How’s your mom?” he’d drawl, and I always wondered why he’d ask, because Mom never filled up at Ned’s. She always topped up her tank in Clayton

when she went to the supermarket. It was only years later that I found out Ned had been in love with Mom in high school. She turned him down to date Dad. But all those years later, Ned still held a torch for her. I remember one time seeing the wistfulness in his eyes as he watched her cruise by in her Chevy Malibu, never giving him a glance. It made me shiver to think how time had stood still for Ned. Still, that was how it was for a lot of folk in Butcher’s Fork. It was easy to get seized up in that Georgia dust.

Continued on page 29

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pursued by Marshall had felt like payback for all the high school put-downs. That was a lot of background to get across in dialogue or flashbacks when a good story should be moving forwards, not looking back. But I did like the opening image of Kasey arriving for work and seeing her name on the water tower. And if I didn’t start there, how far into the past would I have to begin? If I started in her childhood and related everything in chronological order, that would be more like a novel than a short story. And that’s not what I wanted to write. I wanted to cram a lifetime into a short word count, like they would in a country song.

Subplot

While I was pondering the above, I began to think about another small town theme that had been brought to my attention while interviewing Sheryl Crow about her country album, Feels Like Home. Crow had been to a homecoming reunion and

realised that many of the misfits like herself who had hated high school had left their small town origins behind and gone on to enjoy fulfilled lives in cities. Some of the popular kids, by contrast, had come to realise that their lives had peaked in school. Once life no longer revolved around football and prom night the former local heroes had become has-beens, marking time in mundane local jobs and maybe disappointing marriages. I thought that could have been the lot of Kasey’s mom. In school, she and Kasey’s dad had been the Shirley-Anne and Marshall of their day. Their wedding had been like the end of a high school romance movie. But 20 years after the ‘happy ending’ she’s come to realise adult life hasn’t been much fun. That’s why she’s so keen to relive her dreams through Kasey. I thought Mom’s story would make a nice subplot to show what Kasey’s future could be like if she makes the wrong choice. But, of course,

that meant fitting in even more backstory.

Possibilities

For a while, I contemplated writing a serial, with scenes variously viewed through the eyes of Kasey, Cole and Mom. I pictured Cole driving his pick-up to the lake, finding the remains of a bonfire and remembering the tailgate party where Marshall romanced Kasey. Mom, meanwhile, pops into the little country church to do some cleaning and thinks about her daughter’s upcoming wedding, before heading home to the emptiness of her own marriage. From across the street she’s watched wistfully by Ned, the filling station attendant – an unsuccessful suitor from her school days. I liked the idea of Ned representing a possible future for Cole. But so many characters alone with their thoughts felt slow and lifeless, whereas I wanted something upbeat and lively, like a…

27

Solution!

It was then that inspiration struck. I was writing a pastiche of country song images. So suppose Kasey was a country singer? Like Crow, she’s escaped her small town beginnings, but has written an album of songs about her life. The story could take the form of an interview, with her telling the story behind each song: her childhood with Cole; her high school years; the tailgate party; the day her name was on the water tower; her mom’s story… It was the perfect marriage of form and content and would let me squeeze a lifetime into a short word count – just like the songs that inspired it.

Next issue:

How I wove plot and subplot together. There’s more country music romance in Nashville Cinderella by Julia Douglas (Douglas’ pen name)


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13/05/2015 11:37:23

INSIDER INFORMATION

NEW ADULT Phil Barrington talks to an editor and two writers in this new crossover genre

N

ew Adult is a comparatively new genre. US author Carter Ashby and Britsih author Aurelia B Rowl both write for the market. Deborah Halverson is a reader and editor of New Adult fiction and has been in publishing for 20 years.

How did the genre develop? Deborah: The name was coined in 2009 by Dan Weiss, then an editor for St Martin’s Press. He believed there was an audience for fiction about post-high school young people and held a contest looking for ‘new adult’ manuscripts. It attracted writers who had no avenue for publication. Publishers felt these characters were too old for YA (young adult) and not old enough for adults. Weiss published the contest winners but bookstores didn’t know where to shelve them and readers weren’t consciously looking for them, so not much happened. Elsewhere, though, the Twilight series

Deborah Halverson

20

There’s an overwhelming sense of freedom and responsibility, not to mention fear gained the loyalty of the adult crossover readers who’d discovered YA through Harry Potter. Self-publishing gave writers a way to publish, while social media gave them a way to promote, and suddenly the talk was all New Adult fiction!

What is the genre about? Carter: The main character is college age to mid-20s. New adulthood heralds a lot

Carter Ashby

of firsts: college, living independently, entering adult relationships. And with those first experiences is an overwhelming sense of freedom and responsibility, not to mention fear. Good New Adult will capture some of that angst. Aurelia: I first heard the term New Adult used in relation to books like Twilight and The Hunger Games. Young Adult and Upper Young Adult didn’t quite seem to fit. But it wasn’t until I picked up Beautiful Disaster that I read my first official NA book.

Did you intentionally write NA? Carter: No, but when I realised where my characters were in terms of maturity and looked at how they were dealing with some of their issues, I knew my books were New Adult. The women in my Big Girl Panties trilogy are 24 but still going through their first experiences or recovering from their first major mistakes. Aurelia: For me, writing NA was a

Aurelia B Rowl


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13/05/2015 10:31:40

natural progression, thanks to my vast cast of characters in my Facing the Music series, with their varying ages and stages. Book one, Popping the Cherry, is a coming-of-age novel that danced between Upper Young Adult and New Adult. Book two, A Girl Called Malice, is more clear-cut, with a more mature storyline. I’m now writing book three, which is also New Adult since my main characters are now 21 and 19.

What attracted you to the genre? Carter: I’ve read that NA is just Young Adult with added sex, but when I first noticed the genre I was thrilled. Who doesn’t remember with vivid excitement, horror or embarrassment their first steps into adulthood? It’s a raw and emotional time, ripe with possibilities for storytelling. Aurelia: As a romance writer, I like NA because it bridges the gap between your typical coming-of-age novel and the getting married/settling down type novel. The characters still have some way to go before reaching full maturity,.

Do you think there is a need for this genre? Carter: I think society has come to recognise that the transition into adulthood doesn’t happen the day after you turn 18. The prefrontal cortex of the brain continues to develop and change well into your 20s, and the hormones are still raging. The struggle to leave the nest is both a social and biological process and something we all experience. So yes, I absolutely believe there is a need for NA. Stories allow us to process and relate to our environment, our fellow humans, our own conflicted thoughts and feelings. Deborah: Absolutely. I know from my experiences with manuscript submissions starting in the mid-’90s, and from the many interviews I conducted with

successful NA authors, that writers were already writing these stories before 2012. I agree with Dan Weiss’s assessment right at the start that crossover readers were craving something more than Upper YA could give them. Traditional houses have even gotten into it, some establishing dedicated imprints and some officially expanding their Young Adult imprints. Now the challenge is for NA writers to meet the very vocal call of readers to push the stories beyond collegeaged romance and sexual exploration. They want NA concepts and character explorations to grow in depth and breadth.

What sort of subjects have you written about? Carter: Negative parental influences, mental health, domestic abuse, falling in love, losing virginity, divorce. My work-inprogress deals with sexual identity. Aurelia: Peer pressure, losing virginity, friendships, dysfunctional families, bullying and redemption. Up next is a coming-out story, with the two families having two very different reactions. A reviewer once said I do not ‘pull my punches’ which is why you’ll find drugs, alcohol, sex featured in my stories. Deborah: The dominant NA theme has been contemporary realism, but there are mysteries, sci-fi, fantasies (particularly paranormal and dystopian) and more. All seem to have a dominant, if not defining, romance, with characters exploring their sexuality, often in explicit detail. Recurrent themes tend to orbit around getting one’s footing in the world and assembling a social circle that reflects who the characters feel they’re becoming. New adults remain as susceptible to peer pressure as teens, but lack adult censorship. They’ve enough life under their belts to develop distinct personalities but not enough to have acquired a deep

well of wisdom, giving NA writers plenty of fodder for great fiction.

Have you a top tip? Carter: Read widely and observantly. Certainly read all the New Adult you can, but read beyond your genre. Read thrillers so you can appreciate a detailed plot, romance for the subtleties of character development, historical fiction so you can understand the role of a rich setting. Aurelia: Don’t be tempted to emulate one of the bestsellers. You need to find your own style, your own voice. If you can’t find the story you’d like to read, then write it. Deborah: NA fiction has been around long enough now to have its own tropes. Shake it up! Your concept and characters must stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Deborah, what is covered in your book on how to write NA? Deborah: My goal with Writing New Adult Fiction is to arm writers with an understanding of what makes new adults’ perspective and concerns different from those of Upper YA characters and fully matured adult characters. Successful NA authors like Sylvia Day, J Lynn and Molly McAdams contributed tips, as did many NA editors and agents. I filled the book with strategies for writing the NA experience into the narrative voice, dialogue, characters’ thoughts and actions, plot and concept. Everything is done with careful attention to the unique needs of the writer and the expectations of the New Adult audience.

Useful websites

■ www.newadultauthors.com – including archive of Camp NA podcasts ■ www.naalley.blogspot.com ■ www.goodreads.com/group/ show/85934-new-adult-book-club


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21

13/05/2015 10:31:51

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13/05/2015 11:47:34

COMPUTING

Technophobia Don’t let Word start and end your computing experience, says Keir Thomas, who looks at five creative writing apps

Software designed to help creative writers A

surprising number of software developers are creative writers too, and many have created apps that scratch an itch they felt wasn’t served by the big names of Microsoft Word and LibreOffice. Below we take a look at five examples.

Papel

http://goo.gl/PsjsBR

Phraseology

http://goo.gl/v4CbWq At first glance, this £2.49 app for the iPad is similar to the distraction-free word processors reviewed in last issue’s Technophobia. There are certainly no high-level word-processor functions. You won’t even find a ‘find text’ function, although the live spellchecking and autocorrect features built into the iPad still work. The intention is that you start writing without being bothered by a barrage of tools. However, a thin strip at the left of the work area offers access to a handful of very useful features for the creative writer. The first is a paragraph and sentence arranger. Once selected, this splits your writing into individual sentences or paragraphs (you tap between modes at the top of the screen), and you can then drag the sentences or paragraphs around to reorder them. Alternatively, you can opt to delete them. At the very least this allows you to

see your text from a different and somewhat detached perspective. The Inspect button shows statistics about your piece – not just character and wordcounts, but various reading indexes such as Flesch–Kincaid, which show how easy your text is to read. However, it’s the tool that highlights different parts of grammar that perhaps justifies the cost of this app. This simply colour-codes words according to whether they’re nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, prepositions or conjunctions, and you choose any or all from that list. Considering that overuse of adjectives is a common newbie writer sin, this is invaluable.

Atlantis Word Processor http://goo.gl/vfQqkv

This £24.51 software for PC has a handful of writer-friendly tools built in, but at its core is the kind of word processor Continued overleaf


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▲

This free-of-charge Windows app has a slight learning curve that’s not helped by the lack of instructions when you first run it. However, it is in fact fairly simple to master, as you’ll discover after a few minutes of clicking around. The app functions as both a document organiser and word processor but ensures both tasks are as simple as possible. To start a project you must right-click anywhere on the document and select New Papel. ‘Papels’ are individual components of your work and this is the first and only terminology you’ll need to learn. They appear as icons

in the workspace and can be chapters or scenes, or character descriptions, or chunks of dialogue, or notes, and so on. Once a papel has been created you can drag it around in order to visually arrange the structure of your work, and double-clicking any papel opens it for editing in Papel’s word processor. The toolkit here is mercifully simple – forget about niceties such as underlining misspelled words, although you can run a spellcheck pass later – but there’s a handful of very cool features, such as usage figures that show how commonly you use particular words or phrases. A basic thesaurus is built in too. Both are found on the Tools menu. A notable omission appears to be the ability to export your work to another word-processor format, but you can print from within Papel. There’s an elegant simplicity to this app that might appeal to some and a lot of instruction available via the help menu if you can spare the time to work your way through.

23

13/05/2015 10:33:27

TECHNOPHOBIA

you’d expect to find in any office, albeit with a vintage look and feel consisting of menus and icons, rather than ribbon toolbars. Writer-friendly features are evident as soon as you start typing because each key press is accompanied by a typewriter sound effect, and words considered misspelled are not only immediately underlined in red but accompanied by a comedy horn. Once the cursor reaches the end of a line a bell sounds. Those who stare at their fingers when typing will surely appreciate this kind of thing. Type a word and a list of suggestions will appear beneath, a feature the Atlantis creators call Power Type. Type abi, for example, and “ability” will appear instantly in a pop-out window. Hitting the Enter key will autotype it for you, making it quicker to type long or even short words. Power Type learns your most used words over time and will also watch for words you’ve already used recently, popping up a warning window. Hunt-and-peck typists might

You’re forced to view your work from a different perspective consider it revolutionary. Arguably the best feature of specific interest to creative writers is the Overused Words tool, which can be found on the Tools menu. This counts individual word usage, letting you jump to and from instances of the selected word, and also tells you if sentences are longer than a set wordcount. There’s much to like in Atlantis and it’s the kind of app that some people will

24

Send your computing questions to [email protected]

find indispensible. A 30-day fully functional trial version is available.

SmartEdit

http://goo.gl/cJ07UW The apps reviewed so far in our mini-group test have all involved the creation of new work. Although SmartEdit (US$57 for PC; circa £38) includes a reasonably competent word-processor component, its main boast is the ability to run an editorial pass through stuff you’ve already written. It’s not necessarily looking for errors, and it certainly can’t replace a human editor, but it checks for things that typically slip past the eyes of writers who are too close to their text to spot such things. Using the app is a matter of loading your existing word-processing file and then selecting from the list at the left of the screen what checks you want to perform. Clicking the Run Checks toolbar button will then scan the document (it took less than a minute to analyse a 70,000 word novel), and the results are shown under the document in the middle of the screen. Double-clicking any entry in the list takes you to that particular word, sentence or paragraph within the copy. The checks fall into two categories: things worth examining, and things almost certainly requiring attention. The latter category includes such things as suspicious punctuation, redundancies, cliché usage, misused words, and repeated words or phrases. The former includes monitoring adverb usage, possible profanity, repeated words, words that start sentences, and more. A result of the scan is that you’re forced to view your work from a different perspective, even if you’re not fixing problems, and in each case the only reasonable response is to think hard about what SmartEdit has identified and potentially apply a more

SmartEdit runs an editorial eye over work created in another word-processing program, including a cliché-finding tool

creative fix. We didn’t come across a single instance where we felt the app was wasting our time. It might be relatively expensive, but of all the apps here SmartEdit struck us as the one most likely to make its users into better writers. Running any of your copy through its filters takes only minutes and really could lead to better prose. If you’d rather stick to using Microsoft Word, a plugin version of SmartEdit is available for that word processor priced $67 (circa £45).

Ulysses

http://goo.gl/G3Lknv A number of sci-fi and fantasy authors, amongst them George RR Martin and Vonda McIntyre, continue to use a decades-old word processor called WordStar. This is despite the fact that it’s almost impossible to make it work on modern computers – and even in its day was a perfect example of how software could be arcane. But this, say the authors concerned, is the appeal. WordStar doesn’t show your document in its final form, like Microsoft Word. Instead it shows an embryonic version, almost like a page from a typewriter. And while the software is hard to learn, climbing the initial learning curve means the user forms a bond, after which the software

repays loyalty with speed and precision. Although created only a year or two ago, Ulysses (£14.99 for the iPad) put us in mind of this interaction. You’ll have to learn about ‘sheets’, which is how the app refers to components of your creative work. You can add bold and italics, but they’re added as markup, meaning they’re surrounded by asterisks or underscore characters. There are other complexities too, but the result is that you are left to create in peace, without being able to think about how the final piece will look. The words take centre stage. Additionally, once you’ve got the hang of it, you should find it faster than using a ‘real’ word-processing program, a boon if you’re writing books the size of those in the Game of Thrones series. Ulysses isn’t for everybody but it performs a curious rug-pull under the feet of those who believe word processors should be all about WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). • Keir Thomas has been writing about computers for two decades. A bestselling Kindle author, his debut novel The Rock & Roll Beers has been published as an ebook and is available through the Amazon, iBooks and Nook stores


WF164JUN23tech.indd 24

13/05/2015 10:33:37

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13/05/2015 16:08:41

Freelance Markets

THE magazine SCENE Adam Carpenter gives a round-up of launches, trends and other magazine news

Wanted: ideas that are hot to trot Horse Illustrated is a New York-based equestrian magazine but it welcomes submissions from anyone with a riding background and good ideas. Here are a few pointers: ■■ Target your pitch to experienced horse owners, rather than novice riders. Editor Elizabeth Moyer says: ‘The magazine promotes responsible ownership, from providing tips on better care and training of your animal, to alerting horse lovers about pertinent issues in the equine community. We direct our articles to the adult audience.’ ■■ Think of ways to give owners a better experience with their horse and also enrichment activities which can benefit the horse. Elizabeth says: ‘We need informative, in-depth, upbeat articles (limited to 2000 words) that will help readers care for and enjoy their horses. They may be about such topics as training for both horse and rider, management or horse-related events.’ ■■ What to avoid? Fiction, poetry, tributes to deceased horses, book reviews, breed profiles. And longer pieces and columns are always assigned to experienced, regular contributors.

Recent coverlines: Cope with riding anxiety – real life solutions; Go eventing – a first timer’s guide; 30+ ways to keep your horse healthy during an outbreak

Visit: www.horsechannel.com/horse-magazines/horse-illustrated

Market NEWS

How to couch submissions to Therapy Today

Want to be sure that your copy isn’t tarnished by the usual magazine clichés? Then you could do worse than study the work of long-time Daily Mail sub-editor Margaret Ashworth. Since retiring in 2012, she has compiled a revised and extremely comprehensive online version of the paper’s style guide – available free – that will quickly warn you off words and phrases such as ‘broad daylight’ (what is the alternative, she muses, ‘narrow daylight?’) and ‘moving on with my life’. There are many other sections to her guide, all very much worth studying in depth. Visit: http://stylematters.margaretashworth.com – you will never write the same way again and editors will love you for it.

If you have experience of the world of therapy, online magazine Therapy Today would be keen to hear from you. Whether you’re a psychotherapist, researcher, supervisor or even a student in an appropriate field, here’s how you can turn your knowledge of the subject into great articles: ■■ The magazine has around 40,000 readers who are counsellors, psychotherapists and trainees with a range of different skills. You have to capture their interest and be relevant, so editor Sarah Browne suggests: ‘Have a clear idea of the concepts and information you wish to convey and why they matter.’ ■■ The wordcount for most features is 2200 words, considerably less than your average dissertation! Convert your theories and findings into a narrative format to engage the reader. ‘Don’t write an academic essay,’ warns Sarah. ■■ Liven up copy by using case studies from your practice, but be sure individuals can’t be identified from the details and obtain their permission as they will be able to recognise themselves.

Visit: www.therapytoday.net 26

Ticketmaster wants to expand its blog posts about forthcoming events, which currently stick to scant details. Blog manager Jessica Bridgeman is keen to hear from guest bloggers and says: ‘We’re at the heart of Ticketmaster’s events, so hearing from other experts in these fields or the people involved is encouraged. We like to cross genres, where possible, to keep the blog experience more rounded, so if you are an athlete who has a secret passion for pop music (or vice versa), get in touch.’ Check out forthcoming events that might spark an idea and then email [email protected]


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13/05/2015 10:34:13

THIS WRITING LIFE

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

UNDER PRESSURE BLASTING NEWS This ‘citizen journalism’ website has achieved great success in Italy and also other parts of the world and is now making waves in the UK. Blasting News has 10,000 members contributing to a wide variety of sections. Here’s how you can get involved…

Become a ‘blaster’ You have to register to start contributing articles but it is a simple process – just have a good read through the accompanying Blasting News Contract to make sure you are happy with the terms and conditions. You are responsible for the accuracy and appropriateness of the content you provide in much the same way as you would be when posting on Twitter and other social media sites. And though your work remains your property, Blasting News expects to have rights to use whatever you post across other platforms.

Pick your subject

S

ometimes I wish I could write as well as I used to – and no, that’s not a cue to pen a letter of agreement to the editor!

What I mean is, there are days when the words just won’t

come and I pick up one of my previously published articles and

marvel at how smoothly it flows. Why can’t I write like that today? I wonder in despair. It was only a month ago that I penned that piece. Of course, what I’m really wishing is that I could write a first

draft that reads as smoothly as the final one. Looking at my

printed work I forget that every assignment begins with me sitting at a blank screen wondering if I’ll ever write a coherent sentence

again. How about this intro? I ponder. Or that one? What if I put this point up there and that one down there? But wait a minute, if I do that, this other bit won’t fit…

Getting the bones of a piece in order is always hard graft, and

then comes the polishing: untangling convoluted sentences,

Choose from the numerous categories and sections on the site and don’t be afraid to suggest a new one. What is important is that you know what you are talking about and that you are offering something that isn’t available on the main news websites, whether it is hard news or strong opinion. The guidelines say: ‘Blasting News promotes high-quality information written by individuals showing a high level of expertise, authority and trustworthiness in their areas of interest.’

cutting repeated words, inserting better ones. Editing is actually

Self-sub

a few weeks hence, this hold-the-front-page stuff was a jolt to

Taking note of the style guidelines is especially important as this has an effect on how your article is read once it has been posted up on the site – and it will also minimise the chances of rejection by the Blasting News correctors. One interesting point to note is that you mustn’t write your piece with Google in mind, ie don’t worry about how high up search engines will position your finished work. As the Blaster’s Guide states: ‘The article has to be useful to the users. It is not only about persuading readers to click on the news.’

Fees paid

the bit I enjoy. I like to take my time, fine-combing until there’s not a comma out of place.

But what if you don’t have the time to take? The other day, at

4.30pm, I pitched a daily paper a feature based on a breaking

news story. At 4.48, the editor asked if he could have it by 9am

next morning, to go online. For a magazine hack used to deadlines my system, but naturally I said yes, then hit the phone to set up the necessary exclusive interview. I got my interviewee on the

phone at 8pm, and because he was so excited to be in the paper,

what should have been a half-hour chat stretched to 45 minutes.

Transcribing it took until 10pm, and that’s when my brain seized up. How should I start? What was I trying to say? At 11am I still

didn’t have a clue. At midnight I realised I’d spent an hour writing two sentences, which both stank.

Getting nowhere fast, I decided to get some sleep, and start

Payment is made in euros and ranges from a measly €1 to a decent €150 per article, depending on number of hits. You will only get paid after you have accumulated a total of €50 but some frequent contributors are apparently earning over €1000 per month. Keep an eye on how hard you’re having to work.

again at 7am. Bleary-eyed, I cobbled the feature together by

Visit: uk.blastingnews.com

nobody else noticed. So is the compulsive polishing I normally do

8.30 and polished it as best I could before sending it in on the dot of nine. By ten it was online and I cringed at everything I would

have changed if I’d had an extra day to work on it. But the thing is, necessary, or should I learn to stop when it’s just ‘good enough’?


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ADVICE PAGE

Got a question – or advice for one of these readers? Email [email protected]

Need advice on writing and publishing? Novelist and short story writer Della Galton can help

Should it be mum or Mum? Q

I never know whether to use a capital letter or lower case for family names such as ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’. Is there a particular rule about this? Jayne Fallows, Stockport

A

This is something that trips a lot of writers up, but unlike much of our language there’s an easy rule. If you’re using Mum or Dad as a name, for example ‘Hello, Mum,’ or ‘I’m going to buy Dad a present’ – then it should be capitalised. But if you’re saying, ‘I’m going to buy my dad a present,’ then you are using dad as an ordinary noun, not a name. Basically, any time you put my (or your/his/her/their/Bill’s etc) in front, then mum and dad are lower case. The rule applies to other relatives – ‘I like my aunt Jane,’ or ‘I like Aunt Jane.’ Lots of people use capitals everywhere: in Summer; my Boss; he headed West. These are all wrong. It’s probably a hangover from the 17th and 18th centuries when English writers were influenced by their peers on the continent, particularly in Germany, where every noun has a capital letter. But the fashion died out and we should now use capitals only for proper nouns. That said, they are still good for the odd bit of emphasis, such as, ‘My mother said a Very Naughty Word.’

Q

I’ve finished my manuscript and checked it over and over. I feel that plot and grammar are both sound, and that the story has appeal, but I am concerned that it doesn’t ‘read well’, and cannot pinpoint why. Of course, this could just be my own self-doubt. To put an end to the endless readthroughs, I feel it is time for an outside party to have a read and give a more objective sense of what improvements I should make to the final draft. I intend to upload the first few chapters to You Write On (where fellow writers read and offer advice on smaller sections of text), so I can polish them ready to be submitted, but

28

I would like some help with getting my entire novel up to scratch before I start approaching publishers and agents. Or does having a perfect manuscript not matter at this stage? If I submit the first few chapters and they are accepted, will I be given editorial assistance by the agent or publisher? What are my options? Alison Crocker, via email

A

As you suspect, there are several different stages to getting a novel ready for publication. Here is a very rough guide, presuming your novel is complete:

1 Edit novel, looking for structural points

– ie does plot work, are characters believable, does the story work as a whole? 2 Get second opinion – this could be trusted readers, or a critique agency if you don’t have any readers. 3 Rewrite and edit with suggestions in mind. Check for accuracy and continuity, including redraft/cutting of superfluous scenes. 4 Final read – a proofread by you.

It sounds as though you are at stage two. I strongly recommend a ‘cooling down’ period between stages of at least a fortnight, so you can approach your novel with new eyes. As you’ve discovered, it’s very hard to edit when you have only recently finished writing. You are too close to your work. If an agent takes you on, they will probably offer editorial assistance, but you need to get your novel as perfect as possible before this stage in order to give it the best possible chance.

Q

I once wrote to an author to ask why he had described a true event extremely inaccurately. I got a terse reply saying that the author had ‘the right to interpret the event’ as he pleased. I am now trying hard to break into the womag

fiction market and am also working on two novels based on my job (with the usual precaution of no names etc). Is it permissible to ‘gild the lily’ or should I stick to the truth? Norma Willoughby, Halifax

A

I agree with the phrase, ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,’ but there is also the matter of believability. All fiction has to be believable. Will an editor reject a story on the basis of improbability? Yes, they certainly will. If they feel an event is highly improbable – say, for example, it relies on a series of coincidences – then they will reject a story based on that event, even if the coincidences actually happened in real life. I know this might seem paradoxical, but to mention another well known quote, ‘Reality is stranger than fiction.’ And reality doesn’t often translate very well directly into fiction. Real-life people often act out of character, do things for bizarre reasons or sometimes for no reason at all. In fiction they cannot do this because it’s unsatisfactory. Fictional stories have to be ‘better’ than this. Characters need believable motivations. Therefore, and I hope I’m not being too confusing, it’s often a mistake to stick rigidly to real-life events as they don’t always sound believable enough. Our job as writers is to take readers into a fictional world that sounds likely, even when it’s made up. I find that this is best achieved by making sure our characters have clear motivations. I hope this helps.

Win Della’s new book!

Each month the best question or most helpful letter wins a copy of Della’s book How to Write and Sell Short Stories. Readers can get a 25 per cent discount by quoting WF25 when ordering at www.accentpress.co.uk or by phone on 01443 710930.


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13/05/2015 10:35:09

INSPIRATION

THE WRITERS’

I

have been studying and attempting to practise mindfulness for a few months now and want to share with you the huge difference it’s made, not only to my life in general, but my life as a writer in particular. Mindfulness is about learning to live in the present moment, accepting what is and enjoying the journey, rather than being

IDEA

STORE

so its branches were bare but they were festooned with little quivering crystals as the raindrops hung there for a moment before dropping. It was as if I was seeing rain for the first time. I can’t pretend that moment was the inspiration behind a story, but I’m sure next time I want a rainy day setting, my writing will

Paula Williams asks you to discover the magic of mindfulness constantly focused on the destination – the future – or fretting about the past. As an example, I’m at my desk, writing this, slightly stressed because, as always, I don’t know how to start it. Am I enjoying the process? I love writing; it’s what I do. But right now, in this moment, when I’ve already tried and discarded three openings? Maybe not so much. So, before I start on opening number four, I’m going to close my eyes and take a mindful pause. I hear a blackbird scolding next door’s cat. I feel the warmth of the sun streaming through my study window, hear the cars on the road past my house. Then I focus on my breathing for a few minutes and make a conscious effort not to follow those little panicky trains of thought like, ‘What if I tried this?’ or ‘Should I open with that?’ Just breathing and enjoying being in the moment.

Hang on, I hear you say, I thought this column was about writing, not some New Age stuff about finding your inner self! But writing is about finding your inner self, isn’t it? Where else do those flashes of inspiration that take your breath away come from? The other morning, I opened the curtains to discover it was raining. Hard. Normally, I’d grumble about how dreary it was, how I’d get soaked just getting to the car. But that morning I stopped and looked, really looked at the scene outside. Focused on the smallest detail, as if watching in slow motion – or maybe through a magnifying glass. First, I noticed the way the raindrops hit the puddles on the drive, sending out little circles of movement so that the whole surface danced with the energy of it all. Then I looked across at the acer tree outside my bedroom window. It was early in the year

FICTION SQUARE Roll a dice to find all the ingredients for your next story Ist & 2nd roll

3rd & 4th roll

5th roll

6th roll

7th roll

Characters

Traits

Conflict

Location

Object

Volunteer

Naive

Rivalry

Plane

Invisibility device

Paramedic

Cheerful

Coming of age

Rainy street

Skateboard

Traveller

Racist

End of an era

Sports stadium

Cream pie

Sales person

Alcoholic

Feeling abandoned

Bedroom

Gun

War hero

Unsuccessful

Old secrets

Cemetery

Musical box

Carpenter

Pink haired

Sins of the father

Back alley

Ancient spellbook

be richer as a result of the experience. And it was a lovely start to my day. Why not give it a go? Mindfulness hasn’t completely shut up that nagging inner voice but it has helped me be a little more selective when it comes to how much attention I pay it. And, best of all, I’ve learnt how to shut it up at night – and this has brought an unexpected bonus. A few months ago, I wrote here about how I was stuck on my current work-in-progress, a murder mystery that was getting so out of hand, even I didn’t know who’d done it or why! Usually when I’ve got a problem like this, I start going over and over it the minute my head hits the pillow. But this time, using my mindfulness techniques, I told myself there was nothing I could do about it at the moment and that it would all sort itself out. I kept doing this until I fell asleep. And what do you know? The next morning, there is was. The solution, all neatly mapped out in my head. All I’d needed to do was sleep on it, add a tiny shift in perspective and my problem was solved. I can’t tell you what my solution was because that would mean telling you whodunnit, and I’m hoping you’ll all go out and buy copies of Woman’s Weekly when this, my latest serial (entitled Sweet Singing in the Choir) appears. But it was a great example of learning to let go and trust in the creative process. I can’t wait to try it again when my next murder mystery grinds to a halt – which could be any time now!

H

ow thrilled I was that in the March edition of Writers’ Forum, entrants to the Flash Fiction competition were asked to use my Fiction Square to write their stories. I couldn’t wait to see the results. At the time of writing this column I’ve just read the winning story and my sincere congratulations go to the winner, Mairibeth Macmillan, for her beautifully crafted, thoughtful story, Irreplaceable Parts. This month’s flash comp is again based on the Fiction Square, so why not try it? All the entry details you need are on page 59. Combine it with a bit of mindfulness magic, trust the creative process and you could well have a winner. Whatever the result, do let me know how you found it!


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13/05/2015 10:35:41

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A psychological thriller

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11/09/2013 13:22 13/05/2015 15:34:03

LIKELY STORIES

Tales of my GURU

by Hugh Scott

The mystery mentor turns his eye to character description

M

idsummer’s Eve is not the time for wandering through English woodland, because beech trees twist themselves into naked, grey flesh, and birds dart unaware that daylight is lingering into unnatural dusk; and in this false gloaming, movement that is neither bird nor animal can step into view and take away the soul of any foolish wanderer. And I was a foolish wanderer; for, having no eye for fairies and no thought for the dancing faun, I accepted that the giggles shimmering in the air arose from children. I should have known better. ‘Dialogue.’ Robin Hood lowered himself from a tree. He stood on the greensward, a dusty bottle in one hand, and in the other a basket bright with fruit and dark with venison; and I realised that Midsummer’s Eve truly was magical, for this creature, this myth, was my own avatar of drama, my precious Guru, who could find me anywhere under the moon to advise me on my amateur writing. ‘Sit!’ he cried, so we sat, and he poured brandy into cups and sliced me a slice of venison ‘Your dialogue is good,’ he announced and slugged brandy. ‘But,’ I suggested. ‘But you are forgetting characterisation. Every line of dialogue should hint at the person speaking.’ He pointed briefly, and a giant approached out of the trees, and I realised that I was not far from Hathersage, where the bones of Little John slept beneath a gravestone lengthy enough to hold down two men. ‘Master Hood,’ acknowledged the giant. He stared at me and I stood up ‘He is more than two yards high, Master Hood, but a mere child that I can scrag like any puking infant!’ And he reached for my throat, but faded into the green air, so that I sat down suddenly, my hands trembling. ‘That wasn’t very nice,’ I gasped. ‘I know where you live!’ I shouted. I remembered that he was dead in Hathersage. I gulped my brandy. A movement stirred the leaves of a hazel and a thigh peeped from under drapery and a nymph danced, stealing my senses. Then she spoke as a running stream

speaks so that I scarcely heard the words but reeled beneath the music of her voice: ‘Come. Thou art fair of limb and face. My dance is for you. Step with me, and we shall laugh and love and linger on the Trod oh! forever in this endless evening –!’ Then she was gone, and I sat amazed, my slice of venison staining my lap. ‘What,’ I demanded, ‘are you doing!’ And my Guru smiled so that I knew I had nothing to fear. He ate, and drank brandy, and nodded past me; and suddenly there, at my shoulder, was something I really should fear – a satyr, perhaps just one yard high, but red-fleshed and horned with a thin, evil face and eyes lit with inward fire. ‘You dare to trespass among my prey, my deer, my hogs, my creeping herisson whose blood is mine –’ Then he shrivelled and vanished, and my skin was prickling with horror. ‘I don’t understand!’ I cried. ‘Why –?’ ‘Wait.’ I waited, panting. I really did not like what was happening. Something to do with dialogue. ‘Couldn’t you just write down what you want to tell me?’ I whispered. ‘That brandy is a thousand years old and can steady the nerves of… Watch out!’ And I jumped and shuffled back against a tree. The woodland had darkened and branches swayed so that leaves rustled and faces gazed down, round faces with no expression and perhaps wearing old hats and tattered scarves; then clattering! like sticks knocking on sticks as the creatures descended from the trees, old coats tied around with string and

straw gaping from their cuffs. Scarecrows. I almost preferred the satyr. They rattled their wooden limbs as they gathered around us. Their mangel-wurzel heads tilted as they gazed out of holes instead of eyes. And they spoke, though no mouths moved for most had no mouths. ‘What?’ they said. ‘Why? Again Midsummer? Rooks and crows and the pecking skylark? The sweeping scythe? We know… We know nothing. Who?’ And they all said, ‘Who?’ in a horrid whisper that brushed my cheek with turnip breaths. My Guru’s hand reached for me, steadying me, and we were alone, my nerves shaking. ‘This is one tough lesson!’ I gasped. ‘Dialogue?’ ‘I chose those creatures,’ said my Guru, ‘because they are like nothing you will ever meet, and I let them speak in their own voices – not in the voice of a writer – to demonstrate that any character in a story should speak according to its nature and according to its knowledge and according to its desires. The writer’s nature – that is, your nature – should not appear. Dialogue must be characteristic of the speaker.’ ‘Brandy, please. How do I get out of this wood?’ ‘That path leads to Hathersage.’ I nodded, suddenly feeling clever. ‘It also leads away from Hathersage.’ So I snatched the brandy and fled.

Use it or lose it You don’t want to know about the Trod. It is not the path to Hathersage. But it is a path. It is a path that real people can take only on Midsummer’s Eve, and once on it, they cannot leave: they can only laugh and dance and love, and live forever. Don’t use it. Although… The early adventures of me and my Guru are published in a superbeautiful hardback, Likely Stories, published by How Stories To Books for less than a tenner – that’s the price of five coffees. Treat yourself.


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Wells Festival of Literature 2015 Competitions Short Story and Poetry Entry fee £5

Prizes £500, £200 and £100 for each category Plus The Hilly Cansdale local prize of £100 for Poetry And the Wyvern local prize of £100 for the Short Story

Judges Peter Oswald for Poetry Rhidian Brook for Short Stories

Closing date 31st July 2015 Full details from WFAdvert-090315.qxp_Layout 1 16/03/2015 14:20 Page 1 www.wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk

or telephone 01749 673 244

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08456 434 179 • [email protected] 13/05/2015 15:41:17

∞

PRODUCTIVITY

days a week

In the final column, Phil Barrington sums up the series in three words

O

been kept awake most of the night by a fierce storm. ‘I think of that every time I don’t feel like writing. It was freezing, I was sick and this was supposed to be a holiday, but I picked up my pen and notebook and wrote. I just did it. The success of that story always reminds me to tough it out.’

ver the past months I’ve asked other writers for their time-saving tips. I’ve come up with ideas for you to find more time to write but, in the end, it all boils down to three little words: Just do it! Yes, that’s the secret to getting your novel written, seeing a short story published, receiving that email accepting your article idea. I once lived next door to a busy journalist. One day while we were in our gardens chatting over the fence an idea for a story came to me. I told him and he said: ‘Go, write it before you forget and while the energy is with you.’ Stupidly I decided to stay and finish our conversation. Five minutes later, at the keyboard, my idea had faded. The energy had gone from it but I’d learned a valuable lesson. In future I would just do it and not put off writing. One fellow writer told me: ‘Years ago I had Wednesdays off. I worked Saturdays so still did a five-day week. Sundays were for family but Wednesdays were for me. I would sit and write all day. ‘The strange thing is, when I decided to write full time I didn’t produce any more work than I had on those Wednesdays. It took a long while to realise I needed to sit there each day and just do it.’

Screw it, let’s do it

That’s one of Richard Branson’s favourite sayings. It’s also the title of a book in which he talks about what he has learned in his private and business

Do it, don’t regret it

life. He talks about people he knows who, when faced with a project, will say an outright no or want to think about it. Let’s talk books here. You have an idea for one and dismiss it or want to think more about it. Why do you dismiss it? Is it because you lack the confidence or lack the time? Why are you thinking about it? Is it so that you can find a good excuse not to begin? Have you ever considered telling yourself: ‘Screw it, let’s do it!’ You might be surprised. Why not forget look before you leap and instead jump in and start planning, or start writing, and keep on just doing that until something stops you? After all, that may never happen. You won’t know until you try. You could carry on doing it until your writing project is complete.

A novel in three weeks

Popular rom-com novelist Christina Jones believes in ‘just doing it’. When she was starting out and her first book, Going the Distance, was sold to Orion, she received a two-book contract. ‘I thought a two-book deal meant I had to write two books before I got any money,’ she says, ‘so I wrote the second book, Running the Risk, in three weeks. I wanted the money so I just did it.’ Christina is currently writing her 25th novel.

Tough it out

One of the stories Writers’ Forum regular Glynis Scrivens is most proud of was written on a day when nothing was going right for her. She says: ‘I woke with a headache after four hours’ sleep. I was recovering from flu and had

The two biggest problems a writer faces are telling themselves they don’t have the time and procrastination. If this sounds like you, then you need to give yourself a wake-up call. Just do it! Because if you don’t, you will end up with regrets. Bronnie Ware was a palliative nurse, living in people’s homes for their final weeks. Whilst doing this she learned a lot about how to live her own life so she wouldn’t have the same regrets when her time came. Later she wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Most people she’d nursed wished they’d simply had the courage to be who they were and to voice their own opinions. Losing touch with friends was another regret, together with creating the life they wanted to live rather than the one expected of them. Is the life you want to live that of a writer? Then don’t set yourself up for regrets. Surely it would be better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all? If you’ve been threatening to write for years, now is the time to ask yourself: ‘If I don’t do it, will I regret it?’ Just do it!


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Writers Forum Pin up this calendar to plan and record your writing work and then analyse your progress at the end of the month

June 2015 Mon

■■ Topics or ideas researched ��

Tue

John Masefield (1878) Colleen McCullough (1937)

Thomas Hardy (1840) Barbara Pym (1913)

Allen Larry

................................................................................................................................................. ■■ No of words of my book I will write each day/week �� Sara Paretsky (1947)

1

Patricia Cornwell (1956)

2

■■ Stories written/submitted ��

■■ Poems written/submitted��

■■ Feature ideas sent out ��

■■ Agents approached ��

■■ Courses/workshops/events attended ��

■■ New things tried ��

Rev W Awdry (1911) Xaviera Hollander (1943)

8

15

H Rider Haggard (1856)

................................................................................................................................................. ■■ Books read ��

■■ Writing-related income and expenditure ............................................................

22

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900)

Joyce Carol Oates (1937)

Richard Bach (1936) Joss Whedon (1964)

9

16 23

John Gay (1685) Winston Graham (1908)

............................................................. Total earnt: ...........................Total spent: ........................... ■■ Sum up your writing month in one word ��

WF164JUN34chart.indd 34

29

30 13/05/2015 10:37:46

Terre Saul B Maur

Henr John

Lawre

When I began to write Poldark… I felt like a man driving a coach and four, roughly knowing the direction in which the coach would travel, but being pulled along by forces only just under his control

5

Winston Graham born 30 June 1908 Wed

0)

956)

937)

Thu

Allen Ginsberg (1926) Larry McMurtry (1936)

2 9

16

Terrence Rattigan (1911) Saul Bellow (1915) Maurice Sendak (1928)

Henry Lawson (1867) John Hersey (1914)

Val McDermid (1955)

3

10 17

Lawrence Block (1938)

23

Fri

24

Richard Scarry (1919) Christy Brown (1932) Margaret Drabble (1939) Ken Follett (1949)

4

Ben Jonson (1572)

11

Delia Smith (1941) Chris Van Allsburg (1949)

Writers’ Forum #165 on sale George Orwell (1903) Eric Carle (1929)

Sat

18 25

Charles Kingsley (1819) Johanna Spyri (1827)

Thomas Mann (1875)

5

12

Pauline Kael (1919) Salman Rushdie (1947)

Laurie Lee (1914)

Sun

19 26

WB Yeats (1865) Dorothy L Sayers (1893)

Vikram Seth (1952)

RD Blackmore (1825) Elizabeth Bowen (1899)

6

13 20

Catherine Cookson (1906) Vernon Watkins (1906)

27

7

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811)

14

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905) Ian McEwan (1948)

21

Deborah Moggach (1948)

28

908)

30 WF164JUN34chart.indd 35

13/05/2015 10:37:58

Motivation

WORD up!

Janie and Cass Jackson have been helping writers since 1988 We

heard

an

old

song

the other day that goes: ‘Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets…’ We wonder if she was

thinking

along

the

same lines as the Buddha

36

fies the belief that positive thought can be used to manifest our desires. You can do the same to bring about your own happiness, health and success. Think success and it will come to you –

… you’re right!

practically guaranteed.

Remember… whether you think you CAN do something… or you think you CAN’T…

our health can affect all of us. But you are among the lucky ones, you have an effective remedy to hand – your writing! Crafting attractive phrases is pleasing, therapeutic and redemptive. Once you start writing you soon get into ‘the zone’, fully absorbed in what you’re doing. You cannot think about your problems at the same time. Any stress you felt will have flown away. The more you write, the less you stress.

we become.’ This exempli-

Belief in yourself and your writing is the only route to success. You’ll never accomplish anything if you don’t believe you can do it.

ost of us become stressed at M some time or another. Events at work, in our relationships or with

who said: ‘What we think,

BELIEVE

D

o you think that the world is conspiring against you; that the universe is cruel and remorseless? If so, what you need is a strong dose of ‘pronoia’. This is the opposite of paranoia. Pronoia is a philosophy that states that everything that happens in the universe occurs to benefit you. It’s a question of being at one with the universe and thus with oneself. Believe that, as stated in The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, ‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.’

you’re tired of hearing about Ilastfshades of grey, may we have the word? Thinking in grey is good! Thinking only in black and white is not good. Never think, ‘all or nothing.’ Just because you’ve not achieved your goal, it doesn’t have to be a disaster. Something can always be salvaged – things are hardly ever as bad as they seem. Thinking in black and white can be destructive. ‘She’s right, therefore I must be wrong,’ is a typical example. Try to maintain your grey areas – they can be helpful.

WISE WORDS from the late Tom Clancy

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf… You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired. It’s hard work


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13/05/2015 10:38:28

Story comp

Writers Forum

fictioncompetition Congratulations to this month’s winners, Richard Buxton, Paul Barnett and Ben Howels. Do you have a short story that could impress our head judge Lorraine Mace? Any subject, any style is welcome. Turn to the rules and entry form on page 41.

First Prize £300

Little Round Top Richard Buxton

T

his could be anywhere, Elliot thought, any hill in the long Appalachians, between Georgia and New England – but for the monument. His niece, Mary, had left him here alone, as he’d wanted. It had taken a long hour for them to walk slowly from the other end of the old battle line, anchored to the edge of the little town of Gettysburg. They’d ignored hundreds of other monuments, each to its own regiment, to reach this final one. He sat on his camp stool and waited for his strength to return, breathing in the musty smell of fallen leaves and wet earth. In front of him was a low stone wall that was shoddy to his farmer’s eye. It was never higher than a short man’s belt buckle and collapsed at places into careless piles. It started and ended at nothing with no obvious purpose. He remembered the fervour with which he’d searched the ground for good stones back in 1863. They all had. What might be judged a day’s work at home, was built in twenty minutes and was still here fifty years on. He’d never come in the fall, never seen it quite like this. The leaves on the ground held as much colour as those still in the trees, an intricate and endless patchwork quilt. He could see oaks, hickories, cherries, walnuts. The decay of fall outshone spring and summer here. Elliot looked further into the woods as they fell away down the slope, to where the gradient softened and the ground hinted at rising again. It had been high summer for the battle, but otherwise the view was the same as in so many dreams since. He tried to remember the spot where he’d first seen them emerge, those men in grey, coming on uphill with their rebel yell. The Maine boys had fought until all their bullets were gone, then charged and cleared the front – every man a hero. They’d saved both the day and the Union, so history said. You’d have thought something so important would deserve a bigger monument. It stood squat and square, a little inelegant if he was honest. Especially when compared to the grand memorials and bronzed generals nearer town. He smiled to himself. Perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t unlike the homely men of the 20th Maine, weathered fishermen and farmers, placed here with him a half‑century ago. He stroked the cool polished granite with his

good hand. What does it mark, he thought? Sacrifice? Glory? If it were truthful, it would honour desperation, fear, and maybe stubbornness. He remembered the boy he’d killed, a plump boy who’d reached the wall but spent himself getting there. Elliot had stepped to the side of the bayonet weakly thrust at him, and swung his musket to club the boy in the head. It was sad, but boys die in wars. It didn’t bother him anymore. It wasn’t why he was here. He saw a couple, arm in arm, walking along the worn path below. A small girl, maybe five or so, followed behind and kicked up the leaves. Her coat looked smart and new and was a little too big for her. She looked up and Elliot caught the moment she saw him, before she ran and took her mother’s hand. What had she seen? An old face beneath an old cap, a white beard. He adjusted the single medal that hung on his jacket to show her he wasn’t a statue. The family passed on, the little girl looking back over her shoulder. He took out the small chisel and held it in his maimed left hand. Two of the more useful fingers were missing, shot clean off. It had ended his war. It had ended his trade too. It was hard to heave in a wet fish net if you couldn’t grasp it, or to tie the ropes when mooring up. Maybe losing his fingers had saved him, saved him from other battles and the sea. There was another memorial back in Rockland, Maine, with a list of drowned men, a list longer than this one. But his name wouldn’t be added there either when he died – soon now. His doctor had said it couldn’t be long. There was nothing they could do. His father had found him a job at the general store in town, but he’d never wanted to stay, especially after the war ended. You had Continued overleaf


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to make allowances for people in Maine, he knew that. They were only ever friendly in a blustery sort of a way. Like a squall, they’d rush at you, do what they had to do, and be away. But when the regiment came home, Elliot had felt a stranger in his own town. As a shopkeeper he saw most everyone, but knew no one well. He’d moved out west to Minnesota, where he found a small farm and a small wife. When Esther and the baby had died together, he’d stayed on, just him and his eight fingers to keep the farm. He’d feel a pull every few years, and convince himself that there were people who might like to see him. So he’d make the long journey back, timed for the regimental reunions. He’d even been to one here. But wherever it was, the same old comments would come up. ‘When was it you lost your fingers?’ ‘When we charged down the hill.’ ‘Unlucky. As I recall they hardly fired a shot. Just turned tail and ran. Real unlucky.’ He’d stopped attending, and instead came to Pennsylvania by himself. How many times had he sat here? He moved to the monument and persuaded his old body to kneel, then took out the small hammer and set the chisel to the stone. Why be alone forever? Raising the hammer, he felt its loose weight in his stiff fingers and tried to tighten his grip. But he found he couldn’t strike a single blow: he hadn’t paid as they did. His half-hand dropped the chisel and he cursed, then sat and cried, not for them, but for his own loss. Elliot retreated. He climbed the slope above the monument, the leaves slipping beneath his feet, his old hands keeping him from the earth. When the gradient eased he turned and sat again, breathless, setting his back to a tree that accepted his weight. A boy, a young man, was well down below him amongst the woods, dressed in blue. He lost him for a moment, perhaps he’d imagined it. No, there he was, in uniform, climbing the hill as well – faster now. He’d be running if the slope allowed it. The boy flinched and fell, rose again, picked up his cap and came on. He held a rifle and his eyes were on the ground to help his climb, so he only looked up at the last moment, when he was right before Elliot. Crying out, he would have fallen again but caught hold of a sapling. ‘Slow down, son. I can’t see a cause to run.’ The boy was in the uniform of a Union private from the 20th Maine, right down to the last shiny button. Elliot could see the red cross of the 1st Division on the jacket, and the cap, twisting in the boy’s hands, displayed the white bugle of the regiment. He hadn’t seen a uniform like that in half a century. An itch, a prickle, crept up Elliot’s neck. The boy was breathless. He looked over his shoulder and his hair was soaked with sweat. ‘I’m right sorry, General,’ he said. ‘I have to get up there. Up top, to the 83rd Pennsylvania. The Colonel sent me, he did. To get help. We can’t take another charge.’ ‘You with anybody, son? Or maybe you’re just funning with yourself. It weren’t no joke what happened here. Where did you get that uniform?’ ‘I don’t mean no disrespect to the uniform, General. Only if I could get to the 83rd, over the hill, I could maybe help the boys.’ The boy smelt of fear and spent powder. It was in the air. ‘You ever been in a real fight, boy? None of your dressing‑up games. And you have it wrong. The 83rd were high on our right. Nothing but the hills of Pennsylvania back this way.’ The boy’s face crumpled. ‘I’ve seen fighting before this day. Stood my ground, too. But they keep comin’, General, and there’s no one

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to our left. All they have to do is come by us. It won’t hold. Don’t you hear them down in the valley, yellin’ like they was Indians? They keep comin’. No little wall of rocks is gonna save us.’ The boy’s knees gave way and he knelt, holding on to his rifle for support. ‘Pass me your gun.’ The boy reached closer and handed the gun over. Elliot took it in shaking hands, the weight as familiar as if he’d parted with it only yesterday. He pulled it to his chest, and stroked the stock like he was holding a new-born lamb. Slowly he turned it over and looked behind the trigger to where the metal plate gave way to wood. There it was. Elliot. He’d scratched his name sitting beside a fire on the road up from Virginia. And on the other side of this famous hill, he’d sat at another tree, reached his two forgotten fingers over the muzzle, and blasted them from his hand. He looked at the terrified boy, remembered the fear and laid a hand on him. ‘Elliot?’ he said. ‘Elliot. That line will hold. It’ll hold the long afternoon, and at the end, the Colonel will charge you down the hill and you’ll see their grey backs racing for Dixie.’ The boy flinched, put his hands to his ears, though Elliot heard nothing. ‘I don’t think I can go back, General.’ ‘Here. Take your gun… We’ll go together.’ They both stood, one stiff and one shaking. The boy extended an arm and they worked across the slope to ease the grade. Only once did the boy pause to look back up the hill. ‘There’s nothing for you over that hill, son. Trust me.’ They came back to the wall. Elliot could smell sulphur and burning hair: the scent of rifle and cannon. The thinnest veil of drifting white robbed the trees below of colour. The boy sat him by the memorial, unslung a stoppered canteen and passed it to him. ‘You’ll be fine here, General. You’re right. The regiment is still holding.’ The boy loaded his rifle, biting the paper cartridge, then tipping the charge and ball down the muzzle. Elliot drank and it was good to wash the gritty salt powder from his mouth. The boy’s eyes swept about him and looked over the carpet of leaves. ‘There are friends of mine killed here, but I can still fight. I need to get into the line.’ Elliot could only smile and nod, his hand slipping from the boy, who stepped to the wall and put his rifle to his shoulder. When he fired it sounded like a whole company, a crackle of shots rippling along the wall from right to left. The boy fired again and again, then took his bayonet from its sheath and fixed it to the barrel. He scrambled over the wall and stood to some unheard order. But Elliot heard the bugle, louder than he’d heard it all those years ago from beyond the hill. Still sitting, Elliot took off his cap and waved it in circles above his head as the boy raced off down the hill, his fierce cry keeping company with many others, until they all died away down in the valley. Elliot was dizzy. The smoky veil lifted and he was left with the wall and the monument. On it the letters swam like beans in a stirred soup, until they settled out, this time with the name Elliot Nash listed in the middle. He lay back on the leaves, reached to his chest to pinch his medal, slippery as ice, until his thumb and forefinger touched, with nothing in between.

About the author Richard lives with his family in Sussex but travels to America to research his stories. He hopes to publish his recently completed novel set in the American Civil War. This prize is his most significant win and a huge boost.



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SECOND Prize £150

Before the Bubble Burst Paul Barnett

T

[Contains strong language]

he flatbed Ford lends itself to fantasy; speaks to me of wide open spaces and most importantly, it symbolises freedom. The fat, sweaty car lot owner is looking at me, indulging a fantasy of his own making; his eyes taking a wander all over me. ‘Are you sure this is what you’re looking for, lady, only we have some lovely about-town cars that might be better suited…’ I’m dressed for business; designer labels, heels and I’m looking at a beat-up old truck. I can see where he might be confused. I pop the trunk. Guys back home in New Jersey were always buying old cars and doing them up. I paid attention; I know what I’m looking for. I’m very good at paying attention. When I hitch up my skirt to get underneath he starts to fluster saying, ‘Let me get something for you to lie on.’ I ignore him ‘Fixing to take a little road trip?’ ‘Uh-huh, something like that,’ I say, checking the sump, knowing he’s looking down at my legs. The engine is sound; it’ll get me where I need to go. Wiping my hands on the tissue he hands me, I offer him five hundred dollars over the asking price, in cash. I tell him I need the vehicle now. He turns puce, acting outside of himself to close the deal. House of Cars USA likes a satisfied customer. I’m not five miles from the lot when Officer Dan Tucker makes his seventh unanswered call of the day to my cell. The message is the same: ‘Alice, call me. Let me know what you’re doing.’ He’s starting to feed off his emotions now, but I tell myself again I’m in charge, though I’m not convinced. What passes as home has been described by one realtor as being ‘a breath-taking Greek revival mansion replete with white columns’. It’s a long way from New Jersey, in more ways than one. The electronic security gates to the long carriageway slowly open. I check for composure in my rear view, noticing a smudge of oil on my cheek as I do so. Gabriela comes out to meet me when I park up. ‘What craziness is this, Mrs Alice?’ ‘Shhh, it’s a surprise’, I say, smiling. ‘How has Holly been?’ ‘Good. She spend most of the day in the pool as always.’ ‘Keep her busy for me, will you, Gabriela? I need to wash and change.’ ‘Sure thing, Mrs Alice.’ As I’m pulling on my jeans Officer Tucker rings again. I get straight into it with him, saying, ‘OK, it’s on.’ ‘Where have you…’ ‘I need to know you’re going to follow through on this, Dan.’ ‘We will…’ ‘It’s not just me, it’s Holly…’ ‘I know. We…’ ‘I logged details with my solicitor today. Complete indemnity, Dan, and a hearing date for the divorce before you make your move!’ ‘It’s understood. Trust me.’ ‘Trust is in short supply right now,’ I say. ‘You have no idea of the sort of people you’re going up against, do you?’

‘We’re equipped…’ ‘They have billion-dollar portfolios, Dan, a billion. Can you even begin to get your head around that many zeros? They regard themselves as rulers of the universe; a narcissistic disorder comes with the job. Let me give you perspective here ,Dan; his bonus alone is multiples of your salary.’ That must have stung, it wasn’t necessary and I wish I hadn’t said it. Officer Dan Tucker swallows hard before saying, ‘Institutionalised financial fraud in the banking system is our area of expertise, Alice. We…’ ‘This isn’t just a bank, Dan’, I say, a little staggered by his naivety. ‘A bank doesn’t always find itself in the sweet spot in the market every single time without fail. A bank doesn’t have a revolving door on employment for its CEOs; one moment they’re taking up positions in government only for them to return to the bank when it’s useful. We’re not just talking about mortgages here…’ Holly suddenly bursts into the bedroom. ‘Mommy, Mommy.’ ‘Gotta go,’ I say, hanging up, and sweeping Holly up in my arms. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Alice. She is too slippery for me.’ ‘Not to worry, Gabriela’, I say. ‘Look, why don’t you take the rest of the evening off?’ ‘Are you sure, Mrs Alice?’ ‘Yes, of course. Me and this munchkin can manage. Can’t we?’ I say. ‘Whose messy old truck is that on the driveway, Mommy?’ ‘That’s a surprise for Daddy. Only you’re not to say anything when he calls, do you hear?’ ‘OK, but I don’t think he’ll like it. It’s not as sparkly as all his other cars.’ With Gabriela gone we settle into the smaller of the four reception rooms; the one that actually resembles a family room and isn’t a showcase to opulence. I allow myself to float into the world of a six year old. Holly’s little voice, like it’s on helium, distracts me from everything that is going on. Sadness cuts deeply when I think of the hurt awaiting her, but other options are lost now and there is nothing I can do. Mitch is somewhere in Europe – Paris I think – so it’s tough to know when he’ll call. But he will call, he never fails to call. I ride the tides of unease trying to imagine how the conversation will go, what I’ll say, how to keep the anger out of my voice. Bathed in the glow of the TV, Holly and I are almost asleep on the couch when the shrill of the phone intrudes violently and Continued overleaf



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Before the Bubble Burst continued

suddenly, causing modes of flight and fight. Holly runs to answer, which buys me a little time. She tries to look grown up talking to Mitch; telling him about what she has been up to. Looking mischievously across at me she says, ‘We have a surprise for you, Daddy.’ I shake my head and press a finger to my lips. ‘I can’t say. I don’t think it’s a very good surprise but Mommy does.’ She certainly does. Holly hands the phone over to me saying, ‘Daddy wants to speak to you.’ ‘OK, well it’s late. Clean your teeth and straight to bed, you hear? I’ll be along to tuck you in.’ Holly says her last goodbye to Mitch, yawns, hugs me and pads away. I put my hand over the receiver and take a deep breath. ‘Mitch. Where are you?’ ‘Hi, hon, still in Paris, we need to finish off some things here, everything OK?’ ‘Yeah,’ I say, with little conviction. ‘Shortstop mentioned something about a surprise?’ ‘It’s nothing. You know how she gets.’ ‘For a moment there I thought you might be thawing on me.’ I leave him hanging; saying nothing. ‘Alice? Alice? Come on, you know we can work this out. Alice? I can’t deny the satisfaction of hearing the whine in his voice. It’s so misplaced somehow. I brace myself before saying, ‘I saw an attorney today, Mitch.’ ‘What? What the hell. Have you gone stark fucking crazy?’ ‘It’s just to oversee the paperwork; nothing more.’ ‘Crying out loud, Alice, you have to be fucking kidding me. You know the pressure I’m under right now.’ All about you isn’t it, Mitch. ‘Tell me, Mitch, be honest for once, is she with you now, in Paris, with you?’ ‘What? For the love of… Listen to me Alice, for the last God damn time there isn’t anyone.’ ‘I wish I could believe you, Mitch. Just lately you’ve been one spiteful bas…’ ‘Alice, hon, I’ve told you. It’s work – 2007 has been the weirdest fucking year for me, markets in freefall, interest rates all over the…’ ‘People losing their homes?’ ‘What?’ ‘Dodgy mortgages? You don’t know half the shit you come out with when you’re drunk, and you’ve been drunk a lot lately.’ ‘It’s just business, Alice. You wouldn’t understand.’ No, but I’m very good at paying attention, Mitch, don’t ever forget that. ‘And is it business when you pin me to a wall at 3am and tell me I was part of the package, the trophy wife; that the family unit looked good for your shitty career, Mitch?’ My being nettled with fury momentarily throws him. ‘That was… I’m sorry, babe. You know that was just the booze talking. And that “shitty career” pays for everything.’ ‘It’s too late, Mitch,’ I say, attempting to compose myself. ‘It’s over.’ How many hearts, I wonder, have been punctured by those words? ‘What’re you going to do, Alice?’ Mitch sneers. ‘Bit late in the day to be still trading on your looks, don’t you think? I mean where are you going to go; back to New Jersey?’ He says it like it’s a bad thing. I ignore him; tell myself to remain focused, saying, ‘I want you and Holly to have a relationship. I want her to grow up knowing her daddy.’ So she can find out in her own time what a shit he really is.

40

‘You won’t be able leave it all behind baby; the houses, the cars, the spas, the holidays. And just so you know, Alice, that pre-nup is sewn up tighter than your ass.’ It was only a matter of time before Mitch would mention the money. ‘Listen carefully, Mitch,’ I say, ‘it was never about the money. You can’t even conceive of that, can you? I don’t want anything from you, Mitch, not a red cent, do you hear me? I’ll only take from this what is mine.’ ‘Which is absolutely fucking nothing.’ ‘Nothing, and Holly. Goodbye, Mitch.’ ‘You better be there when I get back or…’ I press ‘end call’ and the line goes dead. He hits redial immediately; his voice going to answer and sounding increasingly rabid, the way he has of late when he’s been drinking. I wrap my arms around myself, rocking gently and then realising I don’t have to listen to his crap I pull the plug on the house phone. It takes a moment for Mitch to redirect his rage to my cell but I block him there too. He and his kind are used to getting their own way, being in control, but the wall is starting to crack. In the quiet I realise I could use a drink but I need to keep a clear head, if only for the drive that faces me. There is no going back now, I tell myself. I have several walk-in wardrobes and a separate one for shoes alone. It’s somewhere Mitch would never think of going. It’s where I hid everything, including the file. I take it to Mitch’s office and have one last painful look at its contents. All the telephoto pictures are there, pictures of Mitch and her together; at restaurants, at hotels, leaving the theatre together, boarding the plane to Paris. I can see by the look on his sorry face that he thinks he loves her. He had the same look for me once before domesticity and harsher realities kicked in and before work slowly stopped laying golden eggs. The betrayal hurts. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the level of culpability, it still hurts and hurts deeply. I choke on a wave of emotion before going through the rest of the file. The photos alone would be sufficient to incriminate, but there is other evidence, enough to hang Mitch well and truly out to dry. The detective knew what he was doing. I put the file on Mitch’s desk with the briefest of notes: nine years distilled into a few pithy words. I assume there is no need for matters to get messy. Alice Taking the memory sticks from the file I put them in the side pockets of my rucksack and then start filling the rest of it with jeans, sweatshirts, trainers and hiking boots, practical wear. It would break the heart of the women I loosely call friends here to leave all those designer labels, to turn their back on all that haute couture. For me it feels, well, it feels liberating. I make a similar pack up for Holly. While I’m loading the truck, Chad from security stops by and asks if everything is OK. ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Just taking the little one on a road trip; getting out into some wide open spaces.’ He nods, wishes me a safe journey; propriety preventing him from asking the many questions which are written all over his face. I leave a note for Gabriela, telling her that Mitch will explain everything when he returns and that in the meanwhile she is to carry on as normal. Lastly I gently take Holly from her bed and settle her in the passenger seat of the truck. She stirs momentarily but thankfully doesn’t wake. The seven-bedroom pile with its pool, cinema room and gymnasium has never looked so good, all lit up and, most importantly, in



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Writers FORUM my rear-view mirror slowly disappearing from view. Once on the freeway I text Officer Dan Tucker to let him know I am on my way to the motel, the same motel where we have met previously, a place of his choosing. My cell has 16 unanswered calls from Mitch. I turn it off, ensuring against any future efforts he might make. The quiet of driving at night soothes me and I start picking over everything that has happened, wondering where my tipping point was. Maybe Mitch was right, maybe I was hooked on the money; stopped seeing clearly because of it and losing sight of myself along the way. After all, I had put up with his infidelities and abuse in the past. Then one night Mitch starts drunkenly bragging on how he helped set up subprime mortgages and how much the bank stands to make because of him when people default and have to foreclose. As he is telling me this, my thoughts turn to my father, and how he worked himself into an early grave trying to keep a roof over our heads. The more Mitch allowed the alcohol to do the talking that night the less he saw of my heart turning to stone. It’s almost morning when I near the motel; overhead cables and traffic lights crisscrossing a raspberry ripple sky. The area is shabby; no heart. It’s where the American dream has failed its people and died. Row upon row of take-out joints, diners and motels line the broad roadsides, a testimony to temporary disposable living. It’s a cold place for the soul where the driftwood of humanity clusters. Holly yawns and slowly stirs. Her face still etched with sleep as the grimness of where she finds herself starts to register. ‘It’s OK, sweetie’, I say, reaching over and touching her arm. ‘We won’t be here very long; a little adventure.’ We stop at lights as a man pushing a shopping cart containing his entire world crosses in front of us. Looking in at us, he has a face that has travelled and been made hollow by hard living. ‘Mommy?’ ‘We’re almost there now.’ I can see this is already a harsh education for Holly. Until now she has seen little of life not cushioned by money. Pulling into the Sands Motel I see Officer Dan Tucker’s car. He is early as always. He waits for me to book in and settle Molly into the motel room before he walks across the parking lot, carrying the briefcase and joining me in the truck. ‘You’re on your own?’ ‘Like I told you, Alice, you’re calling the shots.’ Drizzle starts to wrinkle the windscreen, causing shadowy patterns on his handsome features. Realising he is waiting for me to begin, I ask about the woman. ‘She’s a professional in what she does. I guess you’d say she’s a high-class escort.’ ‘Mitch doesn’t suspect anything?’ He shakes his head and says, ‘She’ll probably ride the gravy train with him for as long as it lasts, which won’t be long if you have what you say you have on him. Once we make a move, the District Attorney is going to want to freeze everything he has, every account, every offshore investment, every credit card, everything. All Mitch will be left with is the loose change in his pocket.’ I nod and he passes over the briefcase. Seeing the questions I want to ask he says, ‘It’s all there. Let’s just say we have a very generous slush fund; bait for bigger fishes. If your information is as solid as we think it will be, the next payment will be even more generous. We can do some creative accounting of our own.’ I place one of the memory sticks on the dash saying, ‘You’ll have enough there to be going on with. It’s all the bank’s dirt on subprime mortgages; selling mortgages to people who can’t afford them so the bank can claim on the insurance.’ Continued overleaf


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Before the Bubble Burst continued

‘Peddling misery dressed up in home ownership, the way pushers peddle drugs.’ ‘That’s about the sum of it,’ I say. ‘I want to ask how you come by it.’ I smile. With the regulations tightening, Mitch has started panicking; compiling dossiers, making sure he has leverage should he need it. You see, Mitch is not the sort to take chances. He’s very good at covering his back. And me, well, I’m very good at paying attention. When Officer Dan Tucker leaves I go back inside the motel room

and gently crawl in alongside Holly, my most precious commodity. The next morning Holly and I head out in the truck, my truck, and I start to reason there are only two directions in life: toward home and away from home. I’m starting to appreciate the adventure that comes with the latter.

About the author Paul is a member of the Bow Wharf writers’ group, which has provided a safe and encouraging environment in which to try out stories and voices. He has been placed in competitions and is waiting on inspiration for a novel.

THIRD Prize £100

Final Charter Ben Howels

F

isher stared at the thin brown envelope that had just been pushed across the table. ‘Everything you need is in there. Name. Home and business address. Everything.’ Long fingers deftly sliding the contents from their pocket, Fisher looked up at Duggan. The man’s tone was irritating, dismissive – like he considered himself everyone’s superior. Not that it mattered. Once Fisher had done his job and been paid, he’d never have to think about Duggan again. Rifling through the papers, he swiftly picked out what was important, and passed over the rest. Most of it was garbage. Clients were always so desperate to explain why someone was a target – but that wasn’t important to him. Payment was the only validation he cared about. Other than that, he just needed a ‘who’, and enough information to let him plan the perfect ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘where’. Duggan’s target wouldn’t be a problem, though. Frank Mason was another local gangster, and Fisher already knew enough to find him when and where he needed to. Still, he should ask a few questions, just for the look of the thing. ‘This is useful, but what about the more esoteric stuff? Has Mason got any hobbies? What about addictions?’ Fisher spread his arms expansively. ‘The more I know, the better I can plan the kill.’ Duggan started open-mouthing, looking like a fish trying to breathe air. Ah, so he’s one of those. Someone else has been doing your work for you, haven’t they? The awkward silence was ruptured by a voice like a waking mountain. ‘Squash and womanising. No addictions.’ Fisher turned to look at the behemoth by the door, who carried on in his rumbling monotone: ‘Drives himself, no chauffeur, no bodyguards. Travels with his son a lot, though – Brian, nicknamed “Bully”. Big lad, early twenties, thinks he’s tough.’ The hillock broke into a smile, granite-face briefly fracturing before returning to impassive stone. ‘I snapped both his arms last year, just to prove him wrong.’ And that was it – the mountain went silent again, a golem on standby. The only signs of life were his ox-like breathing and furious grey eyes, which constantly scanned their surroundings. Fisher had done his research, and knew all about Bortelli. Duggan’s long-time lieutenant might have looked like a balding

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grizzly, but he was far more than hired muscle. Intelligent and vicious, he was the lynchpin to Duggan’s organisation, and carried more underworld rep than Hades. Fisher turned back to the crime boss slowly, knowing who he’d rather keep his eyes on. ‘Thank you,’ said Duggan, his tone suggesting Fisher had already failed to meet expectations. ‘I trust you have enough? If you need anything else, Bortelli will oblige. You have his number.’ Fisher briefly glanced back to the bear, who gave a nod like continental drift. Fair enough, time to get on with things. ‘Yes, Mr Duggan. I assume fee and payment remain as previously discussed – twenty thousand pounds on proof of death, payable directly to an account of my choice?’ ‘Of course,’ Duggan responded, chubby cheeks reddening at the temerity of being questioned again. ‘Now get this tub back to the jetty. I want to enjoy what little remains of the day.’ Resisting a strong urge to pull the trigger of the Beretta M9 holstered beneath the table, Fisher rose from his seat. ‘Certainly. I’d like to share a toast on deck first, though. It’s a habit of mine after sealing a deal.’ Duggan’s face slid into a scowl. ‘I’m a rich man, Mr Fisher. I don’t do rotgut.’ ‘I was thinking more along the lines of some Piper-Heidsieck, 1979.’ ‘What? Really?’ Shock had cut all traces of condescension from Duggan’s voice, and Fisher broke into a grin. ‘You shouldn’t look so surprised. I research my clients as well as my targets – and that means I know what you like.’ Fisher walked out on to the deck, Duggan just behind him. The man’s demeanour had totally changed, pumpkin-face split by a broad smile, small eyes glinting in anticipation of an unexpected treat. Bortelli lingered in the cabin. Fisher scanned the horizon, saw no ships were in view, and moved to the deck freezer. Lifting the lid he pulled out a bottle, turned and Continued overleaf



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n’s e m o w t e l h p pam tion i t e p com 2015

s ’ n e m wo poetry ion tit e p m o c 2015

1st prize £2,000

2nd prize £400, 3rd prize £200

SPECIAL PRIZE £500

for the best poem by an unpublished woman poet

Closing date: 15 June 2015 Judge: Deryn Rees-Jones

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mslexia.co.uk/poetry 0191 204 8860 [email protected]

1st prize: Publication of the pamphlet by Seren Books in 2016

mslexia.co.uk/pamphlet 0191 204 8860 [email protected]

Closing date: 15 June 2015 Judge: Amy Wack (Poetry Editor, Seren)

13/05/2015 16:03:05

Story Comp

Final Charter continued

handed it to Duggan, whose eyes started to devour the label. ‘Would you like me to open –’ Duggan’s sentence went unfinished as an ice pick took him in the chest, the upwards strike perfectly angled from beneath his ribs, tip lancing his heart. Fisher wrapped his arm around Duggan’s body, pulled him in close, then swept his legs, dropped him to the deck and straddled his waist, keeping his arms pinned. Duggan hadn’t even had time to drop the bottle. ‘Bortelli! Bortelli!’ The screams were loud, but the gang boss’s struggles quickly grew feeble. Vitality fading, he lay his head back against the cold deck and smiled up at Fisher. ‘Bortelli will rip you apart.’ ‘I’m used to being threatened, Mr Duggan. I’m also used to watching the people that threaten me die. You won’t last long, maybe a few minutes; if the blade comes out it will be quicker, so best not to struggle.’ Sensing a fast-approaching earthquake, Fisher quickly stood and spun away. Ignoring him, Bortelli crouched beside Duggan, grabbed the ice pick and ripped it free. Duggan arched up in pain, then settled back on to the deck, his body shaking gently as he stared into hate-filled eyes. There were no more screams, no tears, just the silent struggle of a man trying to understand. Fisher walked behind Bortelli, leaving him to his moment of triumph. The big man held his former employer’s gaze until the spark went out, then dropped the ice pick and stood, staring out beyond the stern of the boat. ‘The men probably knew this was coming – I’m the one they fear – but a missing body and rumours of a hit will keep the heat off me.’ He twisted his torso and head, looking back at Fisher. ‘They’ll suspect Mason’s involvement. I’ve already started a rumour he was hiring a Russian to take Duggan out. Hell, that’s why Duggan was so keen to hire you in the first place – he liked to be pro-active.’ Bortelli smiled for the second time that night, a dark fissure slashing across a glacier. His eyes still spat grey fire, though, and Fisher couldn’t wait to get rid of him. ‘Not to sound rude, but you made your play for power, and I completed my job. I’m assuming you have my money?’ ‘Of course. There’s already another envelope on the cabin table – thirty thousand in cash.’ Fisher gave a respectful nod to Bortelli, never breaking contact with his eyes. ‘I trust you enough not to count it. One professional to another.’ ‘Thank you.’ Bortelli turned back towards Duggan’s corpse. ‘I assume you’ll do some filleting, and then throw him over the side? Normally I’d offer to help, but I can’t risk getting his blood on my –’ There was a crisp ‘tkkk, tkkk, tkkk’ as three suppressed bullets took Bortelli from behind – one in the heart, and a double-tap to the head. His body rag-dolled forward, left arm coming to rest across Duggan’s chest, as if to shield him from harm. Smiling at the irony, Fisher walked across the deck and bent to retrieve the bottle of Heidsieck, still loosely clasped in Duggan’s right hand. Damn, but he’d really liked his champagne. Skirting the spreading pool of blood, Fisher replaced the bottle in the freezer and shut the lid. The toast would have to wait – he wasn’t meeting Bully for another two hours. About the author Ben escaped from the law five months ago, and now writes what he wants to. Having made a few shortlists, this is his first published piece. He is currently working on two novels, and far too many short stories.

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etting a sense of place into the opening of a short story is something many writers find difficult. Often, so much information is given about the setting that it gets in the way of the hook – the reason to read on. Richard Buxton has found the right balance between setting and hook in Little Round Top, the story I placed first this month. He sets the scene with both description and hook: This could be anywhere, Elliot thought, any hill in the long Appalachians, between Georgia and New England – but for the monument. Later in the opening paragraph it becomes clear that Elliot has followed an old battle line near Gettysburg, but why is that particular monument important, rather than the hundreds he has ignored on the way? A clue to this is provided at the end of the second paragraph where we discover Elliot was a veteran of the 1863 battle, but that 50 years have since passed. This scene-setting has, within two short paragraphs, provided the protagonist’s name, approximate age, location and the year of the present‑day action, while also hooking us into the story. I enjoy the way the author drops important information in the most natural way: He adjusted the single medal that hung on his jacket to show her he wasn’t a statue. This tells us he was decorated without telling us why, but a clue to that comes soon afterward with mention of his maimed left hand. Two of the more useful fingers were missing, shot clean off. It had ended his war. So we get the picture of a damaged hero visiting the battlefield of his youth before he dies – but why does he want to add his name to the list of those fallen in action? Survivor’s guilt, or something darker? The arrival on the scene of his younger self is beautifully

portrayed. In many such stories the point is laboured, but not here. The author gives his readers credit for being able to understand what is happening without hitting them over the head with explanations. As he and the boy talk about the battle, Elliot is able to soothe the young man’s fears and encourage him to do the right thing, as opposed to the action – shooting off his own fingers – that he has regretted ever since. Elliot finally sees the boy charging back down the hill, his fierce cry keeping company with many others, until they all died away down in the valley. In a poignant ending, the vision fades and Elliot returns to the present day to find his name is now listed among the fallen, exactly where he wished it to be, and the medal he’d believed to be undeserved no longer adorns his jacket. I usually prefer endings anchored in reality, but this works perfectly for the story.

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efore the Bubble Burst by Paul Barnett also opens with good scene‑setting and a nice hook. The unnamed narrator is looking for freedom and believes she will find it in the form of a flatbed Ford. The unusual aspect of this comes in a couple of surprising revelations: the narrator is dressed in designer labels, yet is prepared to get down and dirty to judge the roadworthiness of the vehicle. Then she is willing to pay over the odds, as long as she can drive it away there and then. Why such an odd choice of vehicle and why the urgency? The phone calls from Officer Dan Tucker provide some answers, but not all. Instead of spelling things out for us, the author uses unfinished and interrupted dialogue, which works well to add to the intrigue while imparting just enough



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STORY COMP

Competition round-up Set the scene – and the hook Lorraine Mace explains why she chose this month’s winners It would be wonderful if…

…we had more humourous entries. So many stories suffer from a case of the deadly Ds – downbeat tales of divorce, death and depression. It seems we writers are naturally drawn to misery, but this needn’t be the case. Why not give humour a try for your next entry? If you decide to take up the challenge, what do you need to bear in mind? ■ An extended joke doesn’t work as a short story – no matter how funny the punch line ■ You need to make sure your plot would still make sense, be entertaining and gripping, even if the humour were removed ■ The story must have a recognisable narrative drive ■ Do ensure the humour is appropriate and doesn’t feel ‘tacked on’ ■ Allow the humour to surface via the characters’ actions and personality traits ■ Do read humour writers, such as Terry Pratchett, Nick Spalding or Sophie Kinsella, to get a feel for how it’s done.

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information to keep the reader interested. As the story unfolded, and I found out what Alice planned and why, my sympathy slipped somewhat – was this yet another story of marital infidelity and revenge? Fortunately, there was more to the narrator’s actions than a simple payback. She had lost sight of who she used to be, surrounded as she was

by opulence and seduced by the lifestyle her unpleasant husband provided. It was the plight of ordinary people, whose lives her husband and his associates had destroyed, that pushed her to take action. I was never convinced by her desire to buy a flatbed Ford, rather than a more comfortable car, but I am glad at the end when Alice views the future as an adventure to embrace.

Highly commended There were four shortlisted stories this month: Last Supper by Hector Wells Million Dollar Chips by Kathy James Late Kate by Henry Bladon A Mashed Potato Affair by Sharon Marie Jones

he third-placed story, Final Charter by Ben Howels, is an unusual choice for me because not one of the characters in this gangland crime tale is sympathetic. There isn’t a single redeeming feature to share between them. Even though the characters were convincingly drawn, I would have preferred it if one them had been a secret animal lover, or gave anonymously to charity. Few people are all bad, and I think Ben’s creations could have been rounded out. The delight for me came in the ending. Although the story’s initial twist wasn’t completely unexpected, the final twist took me by surprise. On second reading, I realised all the clues were there, nicely planted to mislead. This is the mark of a good storyteller. The story opens with the hitman, Fisher, being paid by a gang boss, Duggan. The first clue to the twist ending comes when Fisher reflects he won’t have to deal with Duggan after

he’s carried out the assignment: Once Fisher had done his job and been paid, he’d never have to think about Duggan again. What isn’t apparent is that Duggan is the intended victim, the hit having been set up by Bortelli, his second-incommand. Bortelli is no stranger to violence, having broken both arms of ‘Bully’, the son of a rival gang boss, the previous year. However, he wants to give the appearance of clean hands when Duggan is wiped out. Had the story ended at that point, even though well written, it wouldn’t have made the top three. The double twist – where Fisher wipes out Bortelli on behalf of ‘Bully’ – is what lifted Ben’s story to prize-winning status. Lorraine is co-author of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press) and author of children’s novel Vlad the Inhaler (LRP)



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SHORT STORIES

Fiction workshop

with tutor Lorraine Mace

Our head judge uses reader entries to show how to improve your writing

Doing dialogue

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ialogue is one of the most powerful items in our toolbox, but many writers shy away from using it. As a creative writing tutor, I frequently receive emails from writers expressing their concerns. Is dialogue really necessary? What if my dialogue doesn’t sound natural? I’m writing in the first person, why do I still need dialogue? The truth is that most stories, even those told in the first person, can be improved by showing the characters interacting through speech – arguing, sharing secrets, begging for forgiveness or understanding, ordering another character to do something, whispering words of love or of threat. To understand its importance, we need to look at what dialogue does, how it works and what it can bring to a story.

Functions of dialogue

Dialogue’s main functions can be expressed as follows: ■ To drive a storyline onwards ■ To help create tension, excitement and atmosphere ■ To bring characters to life on the page ■ To add pace to a story. All these elements are equally important and the order given doesn’t indicate that one carries more weight than another. Good dialogue should achieve all four.

Opening paragraphs

Opening with dialogue can draw readers into the story immediately. Geraldine Miller

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begins The Gift of Life with a very powerful scene, but one that is crying out for speech and interaction. It was the call that every parent has nightmares about from the day their children are born. The minute Sharon opened the door to find two police officers standing there her heart had dropped. They had sat her down on the settee and told her that her son James had been in a road traffic accident and was at the hospital. They had come to take her there in the police car. There are three sections in this opening paragraph where dialogue would help with atmosphere, characterisation and driving the storyline forward. The first is when Sharon opens the door and sees the police. The reader is kept at a distance from how Sharon thinks and feels because she doesn’t speak. She doesn’t ask what they want. She shows no surprise or consternation. Secondly, dialogue is needed to create atmosphere – a sense of unreality, fear and confusion – when they tell her what has happened to James. The reader needs to connect with Sharon at this point. Empathy is difficult to achieve without dialogue. The narrative is unemotional and distancing. The final line also needs dialogue. Let the reader hear the police offer to take her to the hospital. How does Sharon respond? Is she able to pull herself together? Is she able to form coherent sentences? Is she in a trance, answering automatically as if what she has

Dialogue is one of the most effective ways to show not tell

been told is the most normal thing in the world, while suffering internal turmoil?

Bringing the characters to life In the second paragraph we have moved to the hospital where Sharon and her husband, Brian, are sitting together, waiting for news.

A few minutes later the door opened and a doctor and nurse walked in to talk to them. He had said that he was the consultant who had been looking after their son. He told them that he was very sorry but James had suffered a severe head injury in the crash. The hospital team had tried everything but the head injury was so severe. He explained that James was only being kept alive by artificial means, that he was brain dead. Sharon felt like she was going down a long tunnel as she felt blackness closing in from every side. This scene is one that should

have the reader in tears, but because the characters aren’t interacting, it doesn’t carry as much emotion as it could. Let’s look at the same scene with some dialogue and movement included: A few minutes later the door opened and a doctor and nurse walked in. Sharon and Brian rushed to their feet. ‘Is he going to be all right? Can we see him?’ Sharon asked, amazed at how normal her voice sounded. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ the doctor said. ‘James suffered a severe head injury in the crash.’ ‘But he’s going to be OK?’ Brian said. The doctor shook his head. ‘We tried everything but…’ ‘He’s not dead?’ Sharon whispered. “Please tell me he’s not dead.’ The nurse moved forward, laying her hand on Sharon’s arm, but she shook it off. ‘Tell me he isn’t dead!’ The doctor’s frown deepened. ‘James is alive, but… I’m so sorry. There is no easy way to say


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If you’d like your Story Comp entry to be considered for a workshop, tick the box on the entry form or state it clearly in your email

this. He is brain dead.’ Sharon felt like she was going down a long tunnel as blackness closed in. The dialogue and actions could, of course, be improved on, but the scene now carries a highly charged emotional content that is missing in the straight narrative.

Driving the storyline onwards

Geraldine’s sad tale has a positive outcome in that James’s organs bring new life and hope to many others. There is a scene where the subject of organ donation is raised between husband and wife. They spent hours talking about it, but Sharon could not imagine allowing her son to be operated on. Brian pointed out that he thought James would have wanted to donate his organs; he was always giving to charity. He stated that it would also be a way of his loss having meaning as his death would mean others, maybe even children, would go on living. He said that in time this would help them both with their grief, knowing that some part of their son was still living. They finally decided to give permission for their son to donate his organs. This is a scene where dialogue is essential to drive the storyline onwards. The argument between Sharon and Brian needs to be shown. We have to see Brian’s attempts to convince Sharon and hear her objections. The final

sentence should be shown, rather than told. The reader has to empathise with Sharon, but also understand Brian’s conviction that it is what James would have wanted. In particular, the line saying James always gave to charity could be given some context in the course of the discussion. Not everyone who donates to charity wants to be an organ donor. With dialogue, Sharon could have made that point.

Emotional connections

The Arrival Fallacy by Sharon Connor also has a very strong storyline, but lack of dialogue stops the reader from making an emotional connection with the central character. Karen suffers from postnatal stress, but is unaware that this is what is causing her depression. When she finds a kindred spirit in Lotty, another new mother, she believes life has improved. But Lotty introduces Karen to the dubious delights of alcohol as a numbing agent. Inevitably Karen’s drinking prevents her from functioning as wife and mother. She burns her arms trying to get food in and out of the oven, slops sauce over the table while dishing up the evening meal and is only vaguely aware of her husband’s withdrawal and disgust. This is a character spiralling down into the blackest pit, and one with whom many could identify. But that essential connection fails because the reader isn’t able to get close enough to Karen to care about

CHECKLIST Is your dialogue driving the story? To avoid having dialogue that waffles without purpose, ask yourself the following questions:

■ If you deleted a section of dialogue, would there be a gap in ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

the storyline? Does the dialogue cause the reader to fear for a character or worry about a future event? Does the dialogue bring about change? Does it help to define a character’s goal? Does it help to strengthen or weaken a character’s determination? Does it show conflict?

what happens to her. In the following passage, Karen has gone to the local pharmacy to get some ointment for the burns on her wrist, but the pharmacist spots the older marks and takes Karen to a consulting room. She knew immediately that Mrs Walker suspected she was either self-harming or suffering domestic abuse. In her panic, Karen spoke to Mrs Walker as she had never spoken to anyone before, the consultancy room becoming her confessional. Everything came out, her exhaustion and sense of isolation, her growing reliance on alcohol, and as the tears streamed down Karen’s face uncontrollably, how she felt such a failure as a mother. The emotional turmoil doesn’t come to the fore here because the reader is told in flat narration what was said and done. This is a clear case where dialogue is needed to raise the emotional content – to allow the reader to connect with Karen and her problems. One of the few lines of dialogue in the story follows the above passage, when Mrs Walker says: ‘Oh, you poor young woman, you have suffered. But it doesn’t have to stay this way.’ This, at least, allows the reader to see Mrs Walker as a real person. Unfortunately, more narration follows, which once again distances the reader from the characters. Mrs Walker calmly explained that alcohol itself was a depressant, which would only be exacerbating Karen’s struggle to deal with what may be undiagnosed postnatal depression. Dialogue between the two women would enable the reader to understand Karen’s dilemma and feel a sense of relief that she has finally found a sympathetic ear.

Adding pace

With short stories you have to make sure that every word

earns its place. The story needs to move along without lagging, or you risk losing your readers. Dialogue is a great way of injecting pace into a short story. You can put get across a great deal of information in just a few words. This passage from Sharon’s The Arrival Fallacy is all backstory, which slows the pace. The loss of her independence and freedom after the birth of Daniel had come as something of a shock to Karen. As junior clerk in a barristers’ chambers she had held a position of responsibility, and had been good at her job. She had also enjoyed the intellectual banter she shared with her colleagues, and the after work social life which helped them wind down after a long and hectic day. In fact, this passage carries on for some time beyond this point, giving backstory about her husband Pete, his job, how they each felt about Karen staying at home to be a full-time mother, and the effect this has had on her sense of self-worth. But if we look at just the section reproduced, the pace of the story has slowed considerably in order to get the information across. It would be better to use dialogue to convey all of the above, for instance in a confrontational exchange between Karen and Pete. Some yelling would show both partners as real people and enable them to come to life on the page. In this way, the reader could become involved in their lives and care about what happens to their marriage. More importantly, it would inject pace into the story. • Writing as Frances di Plino, Lorraine Mace is the author of the DI Paolo Storey crime series. Her latest is Looking for a Reason


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Author know-how

Research secrets

Cassandra Parkin tells Anita Loughrey how she relived her childhood memories for her research for her literary novel The Beach Hut

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write commercial literary fiction, including novels (The Summer We All Ran Away) and short stories (New World Fairy Tales). My second novel, The Beach Hut, is just out from Legend Press. When my brother and I were growing up, our whole family would decamp from Hull to Falmouth to spend summer with our grandparents. We grew up with a whole other secret life, with the beach on our doorstep, salt in the air, and sand in everything. Then a few years ago my parents retired and moved back home to Cornwall. The first time we visited was in the autumn and so of course the beach was much emptier. It was less playful and welcoming – but far more beautiful. As children, we dug holes and built stuff, fiercely focused on our own little patch of sand. Now I had to look at the whole landscape, and take notice of the black cliffs and the deep caves, and, when we walked down to the water to paddle, appreciate just how far it was to get back to the land. As the weather gets colder, the ocean changes too. The waves grow taller, the temperature drops, and if you get into trouble, there aren’t any lifeguards to drag you out. At the same time, it becomes more tempting to swim, because it’s so empty and beautiful and if you’re brave enough, it’s all yours. At the first opportunity, I borrowed a swimming costume from my mother and went for a November swim in the North Atlantic. Apparently if you’re not acclimatised, which I wasn’t, the shock of the

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To get your characters to really come alive, remember to think of them as living people, not video cameras cold water can literally stop your heart; but I’m an idiot so I didn’t worry about that. I just knew I wanted to be in the ocean. And once I got past the first panicky minute of oh-myGod-this-is-it-this-is-how-I-die, it was glorious. The water felt warmer than the air. I wanted to hide beneath the surface so the wind wouldn’t blow on me. As long as I stayed in the water, I thought I was invincible. My husband had to force me to come out and get dry and dressed again. For hours afterwards I knew I was cold, but I was so high from the endorphin rush I couldn’t feel it. I could only deduce it by noticing that I was bluey-white all over and I couldn’t move my fingers or toes properly. Experiencing that urge to do something that’s maybe

going to kill you, because it’s also glorious and you can’t bear not to, was how The Beach Hut began. It’s about a brother and sister who build an illegal beach hut on a Cornish beach in the autumn, and the journey that led them there, and it was inspired by a moment that combined danger with a deep sense of coming home.

Hard graft

Of course, however wild and uplifting your inspiration is, it takes hard graft and research to build it into a novel. Different genres make different demands (I imagine Jeffrey Deaver did more research for his first Lincoln Rhyme novel than I’ve done in my whole life ever), but none of us can build an entire, convincing world only from what we hold in our heads. Fortunately, compared

to the writers who came before us, we’re insanely spoiled and lucky, because the internet puts so much knowledge literally at our fingertips. ‘Research’ covers a lot of different activities. I usually begin with an extended period of aimless, omnivorous information-grazing, which soaks up hours and hours and probably looks a whole lot like me putting off the moment when I have to actually write something. There’s no real structure or logic to this. I can start off looking at the development of Polaroid photography and end up reading about the origins of the Davy Jones legend, or the history of organised crime in the East End. If you asked me at the start of writing The Beach Hut what I was going to do with the knowledge that you can taste a rock’s iron deposits by licking it, or what happens if you desert from the Foreign Legion, I wouldn’t have had a clue. But these fragments, along with a million others, made it into the finished novel. Seeking out a specific detail – anything from the number of bags of crisps in a wholesale box, to who owns the beach and the procedure they have to follow to evict someone living on it – can feel like the very opposite of creativity, but it’s critical. These are the little details that bring your narrative to life and make it authentic and believable. I couldn’t have written The Beach Hut without a local tide timetable and a website called www.moonconnection.com that shows the phases of the moon. When you’re writing a


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LITERARY MARKETS

WRITING OUTLETS with Janet Cameron

Quality literary magazines The Stinging Fly www.stingingfly.org

novel set on a beach, you have to be aware of what the sea is doing every minute – when the tide turns, how fast it comes in and how high it’s going to be – because your characters will have to be aware of it too. And you can’t set the climax of your story on the night of the spring tide in October if the tide will actually peak at four in the afternoon.

Aim for the authentic

If you can visit the location you’re writing about, getting the landscape right is much easier. However, if you can’t get to the place, my tip is to stay as far away as possible from official sources. Tourist brochures will give you the glossy, scrubbed-up version of a day out, but TripAdvisor will tell you about the state of the toilets, the length of the queues and the terrible manners of the goats in the petting zoo. Also, there’s nothing funnier than a fully fledged TripAdvisor meltdown. Old issues of Vogue and Cosmo will show you what the beautiful people were wearing back in the 1970s; but if you want to know what clothes looked like in the real world, look for family photographs – preferably other people’s family photographs, which are usually way more interesting. And, once more with feeling, we are so damn lucky to have the internet. It’s all out there. We just have to look. To get your characters to really come alive, remember to think of them as living people, not video cameras. So much modern storytelling is done through visual media, but the characters we create aren’t

just effortlessly wandering the earth, observing and replaying the story on the reader’s behalf. They’re physical beings, shaped by everything that’s happened to them before, and responding to everything that’s happening around them right now. And then, once you’ve done all your research and you know every part of your fictional landscape and its inhabitants inside out, you have to do the really important part… you make it all disappear. Research is the foundation of a narrative. That means it shouldn’t feel like it’s even there. Don’t show off everything you’ve learned. Instead, hide it as well as you possibly can, by weaving it into the fabric and tucking in the ends. Don’t tell the reader everything you know about your characters; let it come out in the little mundane details of what they do, how they speak, what they wear, what they eat and what they laugh at. Don’t feel constrained by what you’ve learned. The Beach Hut was inspired by a very particular place and everyone who knows the north coast of Cornwall will recognise it, but I’ve made subtle alterations to suit the story I wanted to tell. My best research advice for a writer is to always be curious; nothing’s ever wasted. My second best advice is that when you’re cold-water swimming in the autumn and your significant other tells you that you have to come out before you die, you should listen to them, because they’ll almost certainly be right. • Find Cassandra at www. cassandraparkin.wordpress.com

This eclectic magazine is looking for fiction and poetry, and is committed to promoting and encouraging the short story. It is based in Ireland, published in hard copy three times a year and each issue contains poetry and several short stories. You can subscribe for €25 a year or it’s €8 a copy. Tip: The current guest editor says he likes to see poems that are ‘gesturing or hinting towards truths we grasp but cannot articulate. They do what poetry alone can do.’ Submissions: Stories can be 600 to 5000 words. You can send one story by post at a time, and up to four poems, which can be emailed. Full guidelines are online.

Firewords Quarterly www.firewords.co.uk This hard-copy literary magazine welcomes poems and stories in any genre and style. You can subscribe online to receive two, three or four issues. They are keen on bold artwork and design, and promise to enhance and bring to life any poetry or stories they publish. Tip: The editors like powerful writing but prefer it if it has universal appeal rather than being too specialised. Submissions: Short stories should be under 2000 words. Add your name to the mailing list online, so that you will receive the calls for submissions and deadline information when a new issue is being planned.

Pif Magazine www.pifmagazine.com Every issue of this monthly ezine is archived online, so you can browse and get a good idea of their literary preferences. Tip: The editors like to be intrigued by what they read, and say they prefer individual creative vision over commercially accessible sameness. Submissions: Simply go to the submission guidelines online, click on the submit button and follow the instructions. They request you don’t make simultaneous submissions, and that, if your work is accepted, you grant them 30 days’ exclusivity from the date of publication.

• Janet’s ebook Fifteen Women Philosophers, published by decodedscience.com, is available from Amazon


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Poetry workshop

PAINTING WITH WORDS Our new poetry editor Sue Butler takes a look at some first-time experiences to inspire you this month. You can contact Sue at [email protected]

I

t’s said that a picture paints a thousand words. This month your challenge is to consider using words to create various visual effects.

Paintings

Can you persuade your reader to ‘step into’ your piece of writing? Can you create a world the reader can see as vividly as if it were physically real? To get started, imagine yourself in one of the following paintings. They can all be found easily on the internet or in books at your local library. ■■ Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. The ‘night hawk’ has a beaked nose, wears a dark suit and is holding a cigarette. ■■ The Scream of Nature by Edvard Munch (shown). Munch created four versions of this person in agony beneath a swirling orange sky, some painted, some in pastels. ■■ The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí, where pocket watches are melting like Camembert in the sun. ■■ Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, painted in 1889 when van Gogh was in an asylum at Saint-Rémy.

Are you one of the characters or objects in the painting? Are you a totally new character or object or are you yourself? Do you wish you could escape the picture? Are you totally unaware of being in a picture? Do you worry the viewer will misunderstand you? These paintings are just suggestions. If you have a favourite artwork, use that. And, of course, the image doesn’t have to be famous. Ask your children or grandchildren or cousin Eric to draw you a picture and step into that.

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Portraits

It goes without saying that the characters in a piece of writing need to be believable. So, to enhance your skills in this area, try writing a portrait of yourself but write as if you were a stranger observing your physical characteristics for the first time. Write two portraits: one that flatters and one that is more ‘realistic’. As you write, consider what a stranger might suspect – rightly or wrongly - from the tilt of your head, your hairstyle, the scar on your temple or the sparkle in your eyes. Use your physical characteristics to reveal things only you know about yourself. Does anything keep emerging even though you try to hide it?

Using colour

Picasso had a blue period, William Carlos Williams had a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain by white chickens, Robert Frost’s two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Choose a colour and write in it. Use its many hues to create characters and landscapes; journeys, revelations, lessons learned, tension, fear, regret, love. And after you have written, spend some time considering why you chose that colour. Was it the right choice? If not, re-write your piece using another colour.

Perspective

Are you the sort of writer that always starts from the same perspective? Does your subject always sit or stand in the centre of the piece? Is the sky always

behind the trees and above the land? Do your clouds pass in front of the moon, owls hoot at night and larks sing by day? Does breakfast always come before lunch and never consists of chips and chocolate washed down with Napoleon brandy? Are the head, hands and feet of your characters always in proportion to the rest of their body? Would you ever contemplate giving them three legs – metaphorically or otherwise? Might they benefit from an extra eye? An eye that came out on a stalk? Or an eye that can sing like Maria Callas… or Johnny Cash… or your cousin Eric? Do you ever climb up a tree and look down on your subject? Do you ever lie down and look at your subject from underneath? When we are children we draw ourselves as big as houses. The sky is a thin line of blue or black or purple (depending on the weather) and M-shaped birds fly between pillow-sized clouds. We hold hands with dragons or witches or kangaroos or dinosaurs or imaginary friends or family or the pets we love, beneath the arch of a rainbow. Spend some time regaining a child-like, no-limits view of perspective. Let it fill your writing and lead you down all sorts of new roads. Go on, try it and see what happens.

The surface

Jan van Eyck painted the Ghent Altarpiece on 12 panels, eight of which are hinged shutters. John Constable used pencil and watercolours on paper to create A study of clouds and trees. Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Both unionists and nationalists have painted murals on buildings in Belfast. The great thing about writing is that you can choose the surface on which to write your piece and if in the process you decide you’re not writing a miniature in a gold locket but a Soviet-style fresco, you can simply change surfaces. So next time you write, don’t be afraid to experiment. Write in chalk and charcoal, then add a huge rococo frame. Take something immense and write it on the head of a pin. Write on paper, then cut it up and stick it on a piece of wood. When it is dry write knife-slashes across the whole piece, then use words like a coat of clear varnish.


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POETRY

Do some research

In the spring of 1821, Constable exhibited The Hay Wain. A critic made a less-thanflattering comment about the sky, and Constable decided to repaint it. But before he did he spent a lot of time observing and drawing the sky and clouds. We all think we can write about everyday things such as the sky, but how well do we really know these things? Practise writing about the following: ■ The taste of tea or coffee – with or without milk and sugar ■ The feel of soap and hot water when you wash your hands ■ Grass ■ A horse ■ Cars.

Now take something you would like to write about in a new and exciting way and make 20- or 30- or even 40-word sketches of it. Learn from every one and take what you learn into the next. Don’t stop after six or seven. Commit to taking however long it requires. Believe in yourself and the process and keep on writing.

Where there’s a will…

I read somewhere that when Titian’s hands became too arthritic for him to hold a brush, he smeared the paint with his palms. Whether or not that is true, it’s a reminder that artists need to adapt the way they create to the resources they have available – be that physical ability, time, or finances. So if the demands of your life mean you don’t have time to write a novel, try a short story. If you can only concentrate for short periods of time, try setting yourself a target of three or four rhyming couplets. Don’t let your limitations frustrate you. Harness your potential and get creative.

Don’t worry about the value

Did Turner or Rembrandt know how valuable their paintings would become? Of course, they needed money to live, but was that the main reason they painted? However you choose to use your words, embrace the process of writing and don’t worry about its financial value. When you step back from your canvas or wall or sketchbook, just take a moment to check you are writing about things you care about; know about; want to tell other people about. Write because the colours and textures and perspectives you use make you feel excited about the subject. Write bravely and boldly from the heart.

IN MY OWN WORDS Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to a Class of 18 Year Olds Some are shocked at how dirty this medieval fellow can get. And then there are those, the quarrelsome, impatient ones, who demand to know why Chaucer’s English is so far off the mark. “It’s a bit much, ma’am,” they say, “he drones on and on in really atrocious English about pilgrims who don’t interest us in the least, not counting the Wife of Bath that is.” But I tell them there is no remedy for it. Chaucer is on the syllabus, this is my job, some things just are, they can’t be helped. And so, for the rest of the hour, I mete and dole the Father of English Literature unto this general classroom unhappiness.

Poet K Srilata writes: I’m a professor of English at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. The irony of having a dead, white man on the syllabus, given that south India has a literary tradition that predates Chaucer, is immediately obvious. Decades of questioning the canon have not changed the topography. Yet, research fellowship exams will routinely test students on the Canterbury Tales. And so we end up not just teaching Chaucer, but teaching him in an unquestioning way. Sometimes, I envy students because they can complain about Chaucer droning on in atrocious English. But I cannot. Often one feels like Tennyson’s Ulysses who must ‘mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race’. Dead, white poets in my country are like carefully preserved private lawns. Many of them write beautifully and I enjoy reading them. But that is not the point. • K Srilata’s collections include Writing Octopus, Arriving Shortly and Seablue Child. Her poetry has also featured in The BloodAxe Anthology of Indian Poets and The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry by Indians. Her novel, Table for Four (Penguin) was longlisted for the Man Asian literary prize.

POETRY WORKOUT Not good with numbers? Use these prompts this month and prove yourself wrong

1 2 3 4

Write an eight-line poem using all the following words in the order they appear here: rain, jug, withheld, high, cautiously, china (or China if you prefer), shiver, less, creaking, back. Write about a number. Make it the hero (or villain) of the piece. Write two versions of the same piece. First write in the past. Then the present. What changes? Which version feels more authentic? Choose someone from history and write in the first person. Say ‘I’ and become Chaplin, Beatrix Potter, Edward or Mrs Simpson.


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POETRY

Poetry competition Each month our first prize poem wins £100 and three runners-up win a copy of the Chambers Thesaurus, worth £30.

Poetry editor Sue Butler writes: In this month’s winning poem, Sky’s Theatre by Sharon Boyle, wind, cloud, rain and sun stride across the stage delivering their lines and doing their best to upstage each other. The full stop at the end of the first stanza is like a curtain coming down at the end of a scene. The white space between that and the beginning of the next stanza accentuates the time that passes as the reader – the audience – waits for the next scene. Now a lone house appears. As the reader is looking at the stage and trying to understand what this house might signify, the lone voice of a woman in the audience comments on the previous scene. We’ve all been in the theatre when the brooding tension so carefully built up by the actors has been interrupted by a comment from someone sitting near us. Sharon Boyle captures such a moment then doesn’t add further comment. She leaves the reader to respond in their own way; as they must to the previous stanza of this poem or to any work of art. Matastasis by Lesley Bowen also avoids telling the reader what they should think. This is a brave, brutally honest and very dark poem in which the words march to a sombre but relentless rhythm – mirroring the unstoppable advance of the disease. The images are savage and the reader is almost afraid to face the next one. But while intensely personal, this poem never asks for sympathy or wallows in self-pity. Mark Russell-Smith also speaks calmly about loss in his poem, Collateral Damage 2014. He makes it clear what is lost wasn’t a palace or a stately home; but the narrator’s home, his community, his anchor. The poem contains few details about what caused the loss and leaves the reader wondering if we would be so stoic if we were in the speaker’s position. Coming to by Andrea Jane Cooke reminds us that life contains all kinds of losses; we need to be honest about our mistakes and then learn from the experience. It’s an age-old lesson but one that Andrea faces head on. It takes some courage to admit that not only has life been wrong but ‘more wrong that you thought’. And it also takes some skill to write about this subject without becoming maudlin or too self-centred. To end on a lighter note, if there was a prize for the most intriguing title this month it would go to the two-part commended poem, When Dinosaurs Loved Poetry, by Clifford Liles. 52

£100 winner

Sky’s Theatre

Sharon Boyle, East Linton, E Lothian Tonight the Wind is guesting and gusting with an operatic air Rumpling root-wrapped trees and glued-on gorse Raging Viking-style through glens and lochs. Then Sun makes a show and glows and Glimmers before waning faint Her promise of an Oscar turn dimmed By Cloud curtains shooing in the main act: Rain Needling down and darkening stone Drilling wide sweeps of field and fen Till Sky bows blackly marking scene end. No applaud, no acclaim – Just a lone house clinging under clenched slate And inside a woman shooting up her lip Cawing, ‘Can it no’ make up its mind?’

Matastasis

Lesley Bowen, Alpington, Norfolk Last month some bad news came to stay But my brain has locked it away In a dismal, murky cell in my mind Only when the torment wardens sleep Is it able to deviously creep Through a small flaw in the resistance Then it tramples my mind like a savage beast Searching for fear and despair on which to feast And finds a banquet hidden beneath a thin blanket of hope. It returns to its lair without farewell Leaving only memories on which to dwell Whilst in plans its next painful forage It came to visit me once before I thought when it left it shut the door But the door was only ajar, this time it’s here forever.


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Writers FORUM Want to see YOUR poem published in these pages?

Collateral Damage 2014

Any topic, any style – all entries welcome! Rhyming or free verse, haiku or sonnet, funny, sad, romantic or angry…

Mark Russell-Smith,York

Stark as it was, that block of flats had a comfortable and comforting face – washing hanging out on balconies, faded curtains answering from open windows, birds in cages, a bike propped on railings, and always children’s laughter and music. Somehow the hard edges of that plain building were softened by the powerlines draped over it like spiders’ webs, neighbours doors open all day, friendly talk and trees: at night-time a galaxy of naked lights. Coming home was then an anchoring. Coming home now is to a place out of place. Expanse of sky above, and below, emptiness, silence shrouding piles of rubble, gaping holes, a twisted bike; curtains still flap from open windows; and in shell blown trees no birds sing. Home no longer but for rats and the dead: huddled in blankets, the old place filled our dreams.

First prize £100 Runners-up receive dictionaries ENTER AS MANY POEMS AS YOU LIKE £4 PER POEM – OR £6 WITH CRITIQUE ● Poems must be a maximum of 40 lines and printed on A4. ● Give your name, address, phone number and email address. ● Add a brief biography of yourself: age, occupation, family, writing career to date, favourite poets. ● Entry fee is £4 per poem, or £6 per poem if you would like to receive a helpful critique from poetry editor Sue Butler. Cheques (in sterling only) should be made payable to ‘Select Publisher Services’, fill in your credit-card details below or pay online at www.writers-forum.com How to enter Fill in the coupon below (photocopies are acceptable) and post with your cheque or credit-card details to: Writers’ Forum Poetry Contest PO Box 6337, Bournemouth BH1 9EH By entering, you will have been deemed to agree for the poem to appear in Writers’ Forum and future Writers’ Forum anthologies. The competition is open worldwide but entries must be in English. Deadline: 15th of each month. Late entries go into the next contest.

Coming to

Andrea Jane Cooke, Lower Gresham, Norfolk Did you ever wake up one day and see things differently, like your whole life had been even more wrong than you thought, your misjudgement so plain that you walk back clear into the classroom so bright through sunlight from the thick of night, walk backwards into the past try to work it out from the start. You never ever realised how cunningly the future is disguised. Step softly on your former self. No one needs know. Fourth and fifth years in at the front, lowers round the back. You never even figured out it was just to ease the flow.

Name Address Postcode Phone number Email address Poem titles

I declare that this poetry has not previously been published or broadcast and that it is my own work Signed I enclose (please tick) my poem(s) payment of £ a stamped self-addressed envelope for my optional critique I would like my entry to be considered for a poetry workshop and to be critiqued in Writers’ Forum OPTIONAL Please enrol me for an annual subscription at the price of £38 (UK) £49 (Europe) or £56 (Rest of world) Visa/Mastercard/Maestro (delete)

Total £

Card no There are four commended poems this month: When Dinosaurs Loved Poetry pt1 / pt2 by Clifford Liles, Canterbury Nearly Sixty by Margaret Finnigan, Renfrews Jogging with Cherries by Karin Mohler, Basel, Switzerland

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Send your event listings three months ahead to [email protected]

DIRECTORY

Literary diary

Kate Medhurst brings you the pick of next month’s writing and book events

FESTIVALS

AUTHOR & BOOK EVENTS

Felixstowe Book Festival, Suffolk

Leigh Russell, London

27-28 June Events for everyone who likes to read fiction, poetry and non-fiction, including author talks, writing workshops and children’s storytelling. Ruth Dugdall will be attending the event to read from her book Humber Boy B. www.felixstowebookfestival.co.uk

26 June, 11.30am – 5.30pm The crime author will be at WH Smith Victoria Station to promote her latest novel, Killer Plan. For more information call 020 7630 9677.

Robert Goddard, Somerset

2 July, 12.30pm The author will be at the Somerset WI Centenary Lunch at the Wessex Hotel in Street discussing his new book, The Ends of the Earth. For more information call 01458 443383.

Ledbury Poetry Festival, Herefs

3-12 July The Ledbury Poetry Festival celebrates its 19th birthday this year and as always takes place over 10 days. It features poets from all over the world including John Burnside, Simon Armitage, Pam Ayres. Sophie Hannah and Imtiaz Dharker. There will be readings, workshops, open mic sessions, performances, music, exhibitions, films and family events. www.poetry-festival.co.uk

Frome Festival, Somerset

3-12 July Although not solely a literature festival, there’s always a strong focus on words at Frome, and this year’s writing events include author talks and workshops and a short story competition. Ivan Cooper, John McHugo, Diana Darke and Peter Clark are among the writers taking part. www.fromefestival.co.uk

The Telegraph Ways With Words Festival, Devon 6-16 July The Telegraph Ways With Words festival is a 10-day event providing the chance for those who read books to meet those who write them. Polly Toynbee, Richard Madeley, Judy Finnigan, Dom Joly, Terry Waite, John Sergeant and John Hegley are among those taking part. www.wayswithwords.co.uk

Buxton Festival, Derbys

10-26 July The festival covers literature, opera and music and Miriam Margolyes, Antonia Fraser, Kathy Lette, F Philip Holland and AN Wilson will all be taking part in the series of literary events. www.buxtonfestival.co.uk

Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate

16-19 July The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival is devoted to crime fiction. Some of the finest ‘criminal minds’ will knock heads in a series of debates, seminars and on-stage interviews as well as talks, discussions and more. Ann Cleeves, Lee Child,Val McDermid

Antony Beevor, Leeds

It’s murder in Harrogate

and Mark Billingham are some of the authors headlining this year’s festival. www.harrogate-festival.org.uk

Festival at the Edge, Shrops

17-19 July This storytelling festival features leading international storytellers in performance, music, comedy and related arts. There are practical workshops, story rounds and informal music sessions for everyone to join in with and there will also be stories and performances for children taking place throughout the weekend. www.festivalattheedge.org

Port Eliot Festival, Cornwall

30 July – 2 August An annual celebration of words, music, nature, imagination, ideas, food, fashion, flowers, laughter, exploration and fun. Sarah Waters, Simon Armitage, Ceri Levy, Matt Haig, Nina Stibbe and Patrick Gale are some of the writers taking part this year. www.porteliotfestival.com

Edinburgh Book Festival

15-31 August Taking place beneath canvas in the genteel surrounds of Charlotte Square, this is a celebration not only of the written word, but also of the big ideas that concern our times. There will be more than 800 authors in over 700 events including novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, sportspeople, illustrators, graphic artists, historians, musicians, biographers, environmentalists, economists, Nobel and Booker prize-winners and more. www.edbookfest.co.uk

15 July, 6.30pm The author will be at The Royal Armouries in Leeds discussing his book Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble. Tickets cost £10. For more information call 0113 244 4588.

Charlie Adlard, London

18 July, 1-3pm and 7-9pm The illustrator of the bestselling Walking Dead comics will be at Gosh! – signing from 1-3pm and then presenting a talk on his working process between 7-9pm. The event is free. For more information call 020 7636 1011.

Kerry Hudson, London

20 July, 7.30pm The author delivers her second novel, Thirst, at the final Polari session at the Southbank Centre. She will be joined by Lisa Jewell, Sarah Savage, Paul McVeigh and Nigel May for further literary crackle and surprise. Tickets cost £5. For more information call 020 7960 4200.

Poetry reading, Flintshire

23 July, 7.30pm Award-winning poets Wendy Cope and Lachlan Mackinnon hold an evening of poetry at Gladstone Library. Tickets cost £12. For more information call 01244 532350.

Pam Ayres, Huddersfield

29 July, 7.30pm The Lawrence Batley Theatre hosts an evening with the popular poet, who is back on tour with her latest book of poetry. Tickets £23. For more information call 01484 430528.

Philippa Gregory, London

13 August, 6pm The author discusses her new novel The Taming of the Queen – the story of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s final wife, and the play from her time as Regent that may have inspired Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Tickets cost £4. For more details call 020 7452 3000.


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DIRECTORY

AUTHORS

FREELANCE PROOFREADER & EDITOR

Short Story Competition Story up to 3000 words. Theme: A story for children aged 9+ The winner to be included in our Anthology of Short Stories for Children. Plus £150 prize money pre-publication. Second Prize £100 Entry fee: £12 Closing date: 30th June 2015

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Send your event listings three months ahead to [email protected]

New courses

DIRECTORY

HELPFUL NEW BOOKS Get Started in Writing Young Adult Fiction by Juliet Mushens (Teach Yourself Books, £10) is an authoritative and engaging introduction to writing Young Adult fiction for the complete beginner. It will help you understand how the genre works, and the big do’s and don’ts, as well as giving you the inspiration and motivation you need to write. Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob (Da Capo Lifelong Books, £10.99) aims to be the essential how-to guide for starving artists who want to become well-fed writers! A guide to the world of food writing, it is an engaging, informative handbook for hobbyists and aspiring professionals. Published 20 July.

Enjoy the view at the Writers’ Lab on Skyros

RESIDENTIAL COURSE Successful Fiction, Greece

9-22 August The Writers’ Lab on the Greek island of Skyros offers writers the opportunity to share the joys and struggles of the creative process. Experienced creative writing tutor Leigh Russell presents techniques to engage readers’ interest and keep them turning the pages. It costs £1245 and includes daily yoga, the writing course and half-board, twin-share accommodation. www.skyros.com

SHORT COURSES Creative Writing: Journalism, London

4 and 11 July This two-day practical course is designed to introduce students to the basic skills you need to write for newsletters, magazines and newspapers.You will discover how to write the story, from the idea to the printed page. It takes place from 10.30am – 5pm on consecutive Saturdays and costs £121. www.bishopsgate.org.uk

Creative Writing, Edinburgh

6 July – 1 August This four-week course offers developing writers a supportive environment in which to further their writing skills in fiction, poetry, and drama. There will be two-hour group seminars and individual mentoring sessions. www.suiss.ed.ac.uk

ONE-DAY COURSES First Person Narration Workshop, Norwich

11 July Award-winning writer Jenn Ashworth will lead a series of exercises and writing prompts designed to help you develop a unique narrating voice for your character.You will deal with the balance between the external and internal worlds of your narrator, the slippery question of unreliability and much more. It costs £75. www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk

Creative Writing Course, London

5 August Writer and performer Femi Martin’s work is gripping and surprising, brilliant and concise, and

she shows you how she does it in this one-day course. Taking place in the Sunley Pavilion at the Royal Festival Hall, it costs £15. For more information call 020 7960 4200.

DISTANCE LEARNING Writing Fiction for Children

Online Learning Circle Learn how to create enchanting and engaging stories for children with this nine-module online course. It’ll take you through the process of choosing the best ideas, creating engaging fiction, finding markets for your work and sending the finished product off to publishers. It costs £149. www.onlinelearningcircle.co.uk

Writing a Novel: the first 15,000 words

23 September This six-month course consists of structured learning and constructive feedback on the first 15,000 words of your novel. It takes place over 28 weeks working at home (finishing 27 April) and costs £1400. www.faberacademy.co.uk


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SHIORT SHORT WRITING

Writers’FORUM

FLASH COMP RESULTS

Last month’s competition was to write a fast-paced crime story £100 winner Journey Not Taken by Leah Osbourne

I

’ve seen many bodies in my line of work. Whole bodies, parts of bodies, bloodied bodies, clean bodies. But this one has me shuddering. I pull my jacket closer around me and wish I’d worn jeans and sensible shoes. The woman only has one shoe. An unimportant detail, but I notice it above all others. One red shoe. Slightly scuffed. Stiletto heel. The bare foot lies toes up on the rail, surrounded by brown and black gravel. On the other side of the platform Detective Inspector Billy Mason looks past me to the man huddled beneath a fluffy blue blanket. Rufus Joyce. ‘Do you need to call a lawyer?’ ‘No.’ Rufus keeps his head bowed. ‘Want some water?’ ‘No. I feel sick.’ Mason and I step back as Rufus leans over, dangling his head between his knees. Vomit streams from his mouth, a wet, lumpy torrent. It puddles on the platform, then slides into the paving cracks, following the runnels before freefalling off the edge. ‘Is she really dead?’ Rufus licks his lips. Mason doesn’t answer. Neither do I. Seems pretty obvious from where I stand. Two rectangles of orange card flutter on the breeze, caught in the rails below a spill of dark hair. Railway tickets. I tilt my head to read the writing. Outward journey: Leicester to London St Pancras. No return journey. I remember my own plans to travel south. See the sights. Sit on the London Eye, or take in a show. All fun things to do with a boyfriend in tow. Not that we’ll get a chance now. Not with a dead body on our hands. A gust of wind sends more debris skittering along the platform. It ruffles the dress of the woman on the rails, revealing then covering her bare legs in a lurid peep show. ‘Mason?’ A voice calls from down on the tracks. ‘You need to see this.’ With a last glare at Rufus, Mason hops off the platform. I open my mouth to caution him, but close it soon after. There will be no trains coming this way for at least five hours. ‘Something hit her on the back of the head.’ The scene-of-crime officer leans back on her heels. She snaps off a pair of clear gloves and balls them up. ‘I won’t know without further examination but my guess is that’s what killed her. The fall certainly didn’t.’ Mason bites the inside of his cheek. It’s one of his tells. The one he always tries to hide when we play poker. The one I always laugh at because it means one of two things: he’s going to cry, or he’s going to kiss me. ‘The nature of the wound suggests something narrow but blunt. Almost cylindrical.’ I look again at those bare toes. Nod. ‘Like a stiletto heel?’ Mason winces. ‘Where’s her other shoe?’

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‘We can’t find it. At least not in the immediate area.’ ‘Widen the search. I want it found.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Mason vaults back onto the platform. He rushes Rufus and grabs him by the lapels. ‘Why? Why, you psycho? How could you?’ Rufus gives a weary smile. ‘It hurts, doesn’t it? Losing someone you love?’ ‘What did you do?’ He throws off the blanket. Wrenches free of Mason’s grip. ‘Nothing the little slut didn’t deserve. Don’t think I didn’t know what she was doing. What you were doing. I saw the tickets.’ I look again at the one-way ticket caught on the rails. The journey not taken. Tears fill Mason’s eyes. ‘Prison for you. I promise you that. And no cosy cell with Sky TV and a comfy bed either. I’m going to get you the deepest, darkest pit I can find. The sort of hole specially designed for murderers like you.’ Rufus lifts his hands in a ‘so what’ gesture. ‘You already took everything I cared about. What could you possibly do that’s worse?’ He sniffs. A brief flash of remorse. ‘She was my wife. My wife.’ ‘And you killed her.’ Mason drops the other man and lowers himself back on to the tracks. He chews the inside of his cheek again. Fat tears roll down his cheeks. Slowly, he bends over the body on the tracks. Presses his lips to a cold, dusty cheek. I rush towards him, my dress fluttering in the breeze. ‘No,


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HOW TO ENTER

don’t.’ Halfway there my foot slides beneath me, jerking sideways on a slick of vomit. Groaning, I look down. Confusion seizes my insides. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. I fall. My vision blurs, shrinking down to nothing, but not before I recognise my own feet: one bare and dusty, the other encased in a scuffed, red stiletto. • Leah, from Leicester, writes: I was watching a woman walk past the window of my favourite coffee shop and simultaneously admiring and hating her stiletto shoes. Then I wondered what might happen if a ghost was tasked to investigate her own murder. The two things fell together by accident and this is what erupted from my pen when I sat down to write.

Runners-up Keeping Mum… and Dad by Sandra Crook Splatter Pattern by Nick Morrish Bad Day at the Office by Paul Barnett Time by Katie Ashmore The Case of the Diseased Redwoods by Tim Dadswell All Washed Up by Alexandra Plowman Little Slices of Freedom by Jason Lees Return to the Dunes by David Higham A Highly Irregular Situation by PJ Stephenson

Editor’s comments The standard of entries to this flash crime competition was impressive. I ended up with a shortlist of 10 and a couple of others came close. Apart from needing to be fast-paced and start with the discovery of a dead body, the assignment was quite open and the entries were very varied in setting and tone. Those that didn’t make the cut shared a few problems: ■■ Many tried to cram too much into the 800-word limit. Too many

named characters, too much backstory or confusing plot detail. A simpler crime and/or less explanation worked better. Give the reader just enough information and trust them to fill in the rest. It’s not a novel and with such a short piece readers are happy to go back and pick up the clues and connections they missed first time – as long as your story is exciting enough to keep them reading to the end. ■■ Others had the opposite problem and didn’t meet the requirement of a fast-paced crime story. Often they were very nicely written but just didn’t fit the brief. Descriptions went on just a bit too long at the expense of pace, or the scenes were static. Some read like extracts of longer works rather than standing on their own. Leah Osbourne’s story stood out just ahead of the others because of its neat twist, cleverly done because all the information is there but takes on a new meaning when you read it again. I liked the little touches of police procedure that added authenticity. And I especially liked the the dramatic, noirish tone, which becomes melodramatic in places – forgivable because it suits the nightmarish conclusion. Like Journey Not Taken, the shortlisted stories all leapt straight into the action and got on with it. I would have been happy to publish all of them, but sadly there’s no room to print them here. Instead I’ve invited our winner and all the runners-up to be part of a crime fiction special, joining professional short story writers in a magazine called Murder in the Sun, to be published in June. Look out for it in newsagents and on our website…

Writers’forum

FLASH COMP Enter our monthly quick writing contest with a £100 first prize

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ur monthly competition for short short writing has a £100 prize for one winner and a number of runners-up may also be published, depending upon the nature of the contest and available space. The flash competition is FREE for subscribers (single entry only). For non‑subscribers (or extra subscriber entries) the entry fee is £5, which you can purchase by following the link at www.writers-forum.com. Entry is strictly by email only. Writers’ Forum wants to encourage you to write, so:

■■ We will have a theme/task each time so that new writing has to be produced.

■■ There will be a tight deadline so that results can be published quickly and entrants can’t dither! The judge’s decision is final and no correspondence over results will be entered into. By entering, entrants agree to these rules and for their entries to be published in Writers’ Forum.

Comp 10: Fiction SQUARE Deadline: 12 noon GMT on Tuesday 2 June 2015 Editor’s assignment: Use the Fiction Square on page 29 of this issue to come up with a story of exactly 400 words. Roll a dice seven times to decide the two main characters and their traits, the main conflict that drives the plot, the setting and an object that you must skilfully include in your story. The rest is up to you, but make your story suitable for a general interest magazine. How to enter 1 Paste your story into the body of an email followed by your name and address. State if you are a subscriber to check against our database or give your entry purchase number. Add a couple of lines about what inspired you. 2 In the email’s subject line box, write Flash Comp 10: followed by an eye-catching and relevant story title. 3 Send your email to [email protected] by the deadline above. Good luck. The results will be published next issue!


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earnings

Where to earn money as a writer A new survey shows that, while a few writers are making big money, most are struggling. Susie Kearley investigates which areas of publishing pay the best

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any writers say you shouldn’t chase the markets. ‘Write what you want to write’, they say, and of course, it makes sense to write about your passions and make the most of your expertise. But there’s a balance to be struck if you’re serious about making money as a writer. Meeting the requirements of commercial markets can bring in cash that enables you to spend more time writing. However, the markets are a changing phenomenon – what’s ‘hot’ one minute, isn’t necessarily hot a month later. Even the most popular markets become saturated. For authors, chasing trends can be tricky unless you can churn out quality books very quickly. Most writers need months, if not years, to complete a manuscript. So if your focus is on books, especially novels, then writing what you want to write makes sense. The question then is what other opportunities exist for writers to increase their writing income? Perhaps the answer is to consider writing for different genres. Could your novel be turned into a compelling screenplay?

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Audiovisual writing The survey revealed that the highest earners were those working in audiovisual writing, such as for radio and television. This is quite a specialist field, but it’s not inaccessible. Opportunities for new writers in the audiovisual sector can be found at BBC Writers Room (www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom) and Channel 4 Talent (http:// 4talent.channel4.com – search screenwriting).

and there’s a huge disparity between the modest earnings of the many and the high earnings of the few. British magazines that publish short fiction include: People’s Friend, Take a Break’s Fiction Feast, Woman’s Weekly, Yours, My Weekly, Black Static, New Worlds and The Edge. There are also online fiction magazines, and some in the USA and Canada that are worth a look. They include Fleeting Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Washington Pastime, Cicada Magazine, The Walrus and Boston Review. Book publishers and agents dealing in adult fiction can be found in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. Some smaller publishers who deal with authors directly include Magic Oxygen, John Hunt and Skylight Press.

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Best paying genres

A new report on writers’ pay, published by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) in April, compares what writers earned in different genres. Here are the more profitable opportunities for those who want to maximise their writing income:

1

Adult fiction The second best paid genre was adult fiction, but the mean income figures here were skewed considerably by a few very high earners. If you want to enter this market, then there are abundant opportunities for adult fiction in magazines, and a huge book market. Both are very competitive, however,

Children’s fiction If you look at median incomes rather than mean, then the second-best paid genre was children’s fiction. The children’s and young adult book market is considerable – see the Children’s Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook for agents and publishers. However, British magazines in

this genre tend to publish more comic strips, puzzles and crafts than traditional short stories. Cricket Media in the USA offers opportunities for writers of children’s fiction. They have a wide range of titles that carry short fiction, appealing to children of all ages (www. cricketmag.com).

4

Education This includes text books, educational articles and course materials. This is a specialist area of writing and you’ll ideally need expertise and connections within education to make progress in this genre.

5

Travel One of the lower paid genres was travel, yet it’s quite an attractive genre to many aspiring writers. Opportunities in this sector include Coast, National Geographic, Britain, Discover Britain and Wanderlust. Many airlines have in-flight magazines that offer opportunities for freelancers, for example High Life, the British Airways magazine. Bear in mind that you don’t need to travel abroad to contribute. An article about your home town is exotic to someone overseas.


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JK Rowling’s success isn’t typical, but her route to publication is

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Academic The lowest paid writers who responded to the survey were academic writers, who might typically write about their research topics. Many of them have full-time jobs at universities and writing is a small part of their working life. Their work would include contributions to specialist journals and the writing of specialist books. Technical writing and non-fiction writing were also at the low end of the pay scale. However, the survey didn’t ask respondents for the number of hours spent writing, so it’s hard to say to what extent the earnings per genre

Five ways to increase your writing income 1 Target some of the best paying sectors 2 Draw on personal expertise and experience to provide a unique selling point 3 Consider grants for which you’re eligible 4 Consider complementary income streams 5 Put in long hours, work hard and persevere!

were swayed by the number of hours worked. It’s perhaps hardly surprising that those who had full-time academic positions earned the least from their writing. They probably don’t have a lot of time to spend on writing. However, for those writers focused on the money, perhaps exploring opportunities in the most profitable genres would make some sense.

The gender pay gap

Is it better to be a male writer? Not necessarily. Among the ‘professional authors’ group, women earned 80 per cent of what men earned, but overall, women actually earned slightly more than men when you look at all respondents combined. The gender pay gap between writers is much smaller than in other industries.

Rewards increase with age – up to a point

The respondents’ earnings increased with age up to the age of 50, then decreased slightly between the ages of 50 and 59, before falling sharply in retirement years. Younger writers should perhaps feel encouraged then, that better financial rewards

are to come. As writers develop their skills over time and grow in their role, they are able to draw on their acquired wisdom and experience to achieve higher earnings. For older writers wondering if they’ve peaked, there’s no need to despair. There’s still a huge market for material by mature writers, whether in mainstream titles or in specialist publications such as The Oldie, People’s Friend, Saga Magazine, The Lady and Yours, to name a few. If you’re wondering whether you’re too old to be a successful novelist, think again. The author of the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, didn’t get a publishing deal until she was 65 years old. Penelope Fitzgerald’s first novel, The Golden Child, wasn’t published until she was 60. Frank McCourt only saw Angela’s Ashes published when he was 66.

Multiple incomes and grants

Most of the respondents had multiple income streams; 24.81 per cent were academics/ teachers, 3.75 per cent were retired, and over 11 per cent defined their primary role as ‘other’. Even among those who were primarily working in writing roles, such as authors, journalists, editors, and playwrights, most had another income stream. Sixty-two percent of ‘authors’ received over 50 per cent of their income from other sources. There’s something to be said for up-skilling and diversifying in this challenging environment. Some writers diversify by providing photography, illustrations or computer graphics to accompany their work. Others deliver writing workshops or do private tutoring to generate a second income. Some engage in content creation for businesses, social media management, or marketing / public relations activities. Arts Councils provide grants for artists and writers to enable

them to dedicate time to artistic works. JK Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council before her books became hugely successful. This enabled her to work on her second Harry Potter novel, The Chamber of Secrets, without having to worry about money. Literary projects are also one of the many categories funded by Google’s Creative Work Fund (see www. creativeworkfund.org).

Who are the big earners? The top earners in the ALCS Writers’ Pay Survey appear to be full-time writers, particularly in audiovisual writing, adult fiction, and some children’s fiction. However, there is wide variation between authors’ earnings in every genre and there are big differences between the mean average and the median in every genre. This shows that a small number of writers are very highly paid, while the majority of writers are relatively poorly paid. However, without knowing the number of hours that the respondents spent on their writing, it’s hard to be certain about just how low their earnings were. Many were simply working part time.

Is success down to luck, ability or hard work?

There’s always an element of luck when a writer’s work gets picked up by influential people and gains momentum in the marketplace, but a lot of a writer’s success is also down to hard work, talent and a good command of written English. Dedication, commitment and tenacity are also key attributes of successful writers. JK Rowling wasn’t an overnight success. She was a divorcee and single mother, living on benefits, who was struggling financially for years. She spent years improving her writing craft before she found success with her Harry Potter series – which incidentally was rejected by 12 publishers before it was accepted.


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COMP CALENDAR

Competitive Edge Remember: different judges like different things

Clio Gray

Helen M Walters talks to short story competition organiser Graham Jennings of The Henshaw Press

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ublisher Graham Jennings, of The Henshaw Press, runs a quarterly short story competition. I asked him what he looks for in a winning short story. Here are his tips.

■ The first paragraph – and indeed the first sentence – is crucial. It must grab the reader’s attention and make them want to read on. Look at newspapers and see how they grab attention with a handful of words in their headlines. ■ Use dialogue where possible; it helps to lift the characters off the page. It helps the reader empathise with them. ■ Get an independent critique; it is very difficult to obtain a true critique from friends and family. ■ Try different competitions; remember different judges have different views. Within our own competition each judge allocates points to a story and it is not unknown for one judge to give a story maximum points whilst another will not give it any points. One of our recent prize winners had been sending a story to competitions for 18 months without success. Our judges thought it one of the best stories we have seen. ■ Your story will be judged against the other entries in that particular competition. So it is not only the quality of your story that matters but the quality of the other entries. Do read the winning stories in any competition you enter and see how yours compares. ■ Have faith, once you have done all the above; persist. You need a thick skin if you are a writer. All, even the greatest, have had work rejected. Keep writing.

It’s all excellent advice. Bear Graham’s tips in mind whatever competitions you are thinking of entering this month. Find out more about The Henshaw Press at henshawpress.co.uk.

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Helen’s Hint Flash Fiction

Competition of the Month

Last time I taught a residential creative writing course, I asked my students to do a couple of exercises that encourage economy of words. This is great practice for writing flash fiction. The first challenge was to write a letter to a newspaper or magazine in fewer than 35 words. One of the problems people had was wasting words at the beginning by setting the scene. In a really short piece, you don’t have time to do that. You have to dive straight into what you want to say without any hesitation. It may take you a few drafts, but if you can distil the idea you want to get across into as few words as possible you’ll make it as strong and hard-hitting as it possibly can be. The second challenge was to write a haiku – a poem typically restricted to three lines, the first with five syllables, the second with seven, and the last with five syllables again. When writing haiku, every syllable counts, so you need to be even more careful about word economy. You also want to suit the poetic form by making sure all your words sound perfectly balanced. That’s an awful lot to get right in one short piece, so it will really get your brain working hard. When you’re writing short pieces, try to make your writing as snappy and precise as possible by doing the following:

This month’s featured comp is the HISSAC – or Highlands and Islands Short Story Association Competition. Chair of judges Clio Gray told me, ‘We have always encouraged unusual stories, as can be seen in our new 10-year anthology, where we feature a story in rhyme, one in the form of a job application, a couple in dialect, and some rather surreal stories that would struggle to find a home elsewhere – all welcomed by HISSAC with open arms.’ So if you’ve got a story idea that feels a bit different or unusual this could be the perfect home for it. Full details are in the listing (page 64), and if you want to find out more about both the HISSAC competition and their anthology take a look at their website www.hissac.co.uk

■ Focus on the art of making every single word count. ■ Think about the order in which you are saying things. Sometimes you can save a few words by re-ordering a paragraph or restructuring a sentence. ■ Less is more. Aim to focus on one main character in one setting with one theme. ■ Get to the point straight away. You don’t have time for pre-amble or introduction. ■ If you’re going to have a twist in your

story, leave it until the very end for maximum impact. Both exercises are a good way of practising the things you should bear in mind when writing flash. Why not give thom a go and work on your ability to be brief? This will stand you in good stead for flash competitions where the wordcount is low and sticking to it is crucial. Then, if you’re looking for a flash fiction competition to enter, the Exeter Flash Competition closes at the end of August. Full details are in the listing on page 64. Organiser Cathie Hartigan told me: ‘If you want a top tip it would be for entrants to think about their flash stories as small on the page but big in the mind. Aim to imply rather than state.’ Do give flash fiction a go. Learning how to make every word count is such a great skill. Good luck!


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Send your success stories, questions for Helen, tips and comp news (three months in advance) to [email protected]

with short story writer Helen M Walters

COMPS NOW OPEN Write Stars Love It! Closes 1 September 2015 Story: 250 words. Theme: Love. Fee: £3.50. Prize: £75, a bottle of champagne and free edit/critique of up to 1000 words of your romantic fiction. Details: see writestars.co.uk or write to WriteStars Ltd, 43 Berkeley Square, London W1J 5FJ. Mslexia Novel Competition Closes 21 September 2015 Novel: first 5000 words. Fee: £25. Prize: £5000; finalists get manuscript feedback from The Literary Consultancy and invitation to networking event with literary agents. Rules: women only, unpublished novelists. Details: see mslexia. co.uk/novel-competition-rules or write to Freepost Plus RTKZLGXC-EBAH, Mslexia Publications Ltd, PO Box 656 Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1BR. Erewash Writers’ Group Short Story Competition Closes 24 September 2015 Story: 2000 words. Fee: £3 for one entry, £5 for two, £2.50 thereafter. Prizes: £100; £50; £25; free entry to 2016 comp for two ‘highly commended’ entries. Judge: Simon Whaley. Details: see erewashwriterscompetition.weebly.com or write to EWG Competition, Parklands Connexion, Stanhope Street, Long Eaton, Notts NG10 4QN.

Institute of Continuing Education

Study creative writing at Cambridge this summer

Poetry prize host Ledbury

Join adults of all ages and from over 60 countries at the University of Cambridge International Summer Schools this July and August. The two-week Creative Writing programme (2 – 15 August 2015) builds on Cambridge’s rich literary tradition and will help you

Words Magazine Short Story Competition Story: 2000 words. Theme: Murder. Fee: FREE. Prizes: £50; £25. Details: www.wordsmag.com/ compcal15.htm. Henshaw Press Short Story Competition Story: 2000 words. Fee: £5. Prizes: £100; £50; £25. Details: see henshawpress.co.uk or write to The Henshaw Press Competition, 24 Rowlandson Close, Northampton NN3 3PB. Short Stories Aloud Showcase Story: 2000 words. Theme: bear in mind suitability to be read aloud. Fee: FREE (max three entries). Prizes: three winning stories will be read aloud as part of Oxford showcase on 20 Oct and will win a consultation with literary agent Amy Waite of Felicity Bryan Associates. Rules: winners should be able to make reading date; open only to previously unpublished writers. Details: see www.facebook.com/ groups/151381574984462 or email [email protected]

COMPS CLOSING SOON 9 JUL

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Ledbury Poetry Festival Poetry Competition Poem: 40 lines. Fee: £5 first poem, then £3.50. Prizes: £1000 and a course at Ty Newydd, The National Writers’ Centre for Wales; £500; £250. Judge: Deryn Rees-Jones. Details: see www.poetry-festival. co.uk/ledbury-poetry-competition or write to Ledbury Poetry Continued overleaf

by established authors, focus on writing in a variety of genres and styles. Other programmes include Literature, Shakespeare, Ancient and Classical Worlds, Medieval Studies and History. All are supplemented by morning plenary lectures and evening talks. To add to the experience you can stay in a historic Cambridge College, join weekend excursions and enjoy all that Cambridge has to offer. +44 (0)1223 760850 [email protected] www.ice.cam.ac.uk/intsummer

WIN!!! Enter our ‘Love It!’ 250-word love story competition.

30 JUN Moth International Short Story Prize Story: 6000 words. Fee: €12. Prizes: €3000; week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France (including €250 for travel); €1000. Judge: Donal Ryan. Details: see www.themothmagazine.com or write to The Moth Short Story Prize, The Moth, Drummullen, Cavan, Co Cavan, Ireland.

develop your existing writing skills. Practice-based courses, taught

Winning prize: £75 + Champagne + free critique

... and our ... ‘Springtime!’ short-story competition: £100 prize

Details at www.writestars.co.uk Or write to us at our registered office: WriteStars Ltd, 43 Berkeley Square, London W1J 5FJ. Or call on 020 3078 7825. T&C & rules apply.

GOOD LUCK!!!

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COMP CALENDAR

Continued from page 63

Wasafiri judge Toby Litt

Festival, Church Street, Ledbury, Herefs HR8 1DH. 13 JUL Doris Gooderson Short Story Competition Story: 1200 words. Fee: £3. Prizes: £150; £70; £40. Details: see wrekinwriters.wordpress.com/ doris-gooderson-short-story-competition or write to Competition Secretary, 29 Christine Avenue, Wellington, Shrops TF1 2DX. 19 JUL HG Wells Short Story Competition Story: 1500-5000 words. Theme: Class. Fee: £10 (under-21s FREE). Prizes: £250; under 21s £1000. Details: see hgwellscompetition. com or write to HG Wells Short Story Competition, 3 Jointon Road, Folkestone, Kent CT20 2RF. 24 JUL Wasafiri New Writing Prize Fiction/Life writing: 3000 words. Poetry: five poems. Fees: £6, £10, £15 for up to three categories. Prizes: £300 and publication (each category). Judges: Toby Litt,Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Roger Robinson. Details: www.wasafiri.org/wasafiri-new-writing-prize.asp or write to Wasafiri Prize, 1-11 Hawley Crescent, London NW1 8NP. 31 JUL

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Cinnamon Press Debut Novel (or Novella) Prize Novel/Novella: first 10,000 words. Fee: £12. Prize: £700 plus publishing contract. Details: see www.cinnamonpress.com or write to Meirion House, Tanygrisiau, Blaenau Ffestiniog LL41 3SU. HISSAC Short Story and Flash Fiction Competitions Short story: 2500 words. Flash: 500 words. Fee: Story £5, or £12 for three. Flash £2, or £5 for three. Prize: Story £400; 2 x £50. Flash £50. Details: see www.hissac. co.uk/CompetitionDetails or write to 20 Lochslin Place, Balintore, Easter Ross, IV20 1UP.

Sterts Theatre One-Act Play Writing Competition Play: 30 mins, up to four actors. Fee: £6. Prizes: full production and £100; rehearsed readings and £25; for runner-up; additional £25 for best play on a Cornish theme. Details: www.sterts.co.uk 5 AUG Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Story: 3000 words. Poem: 100 lines, or three up to 40 lines. Fee: €10 (multiple entries €7.50 each). Prizes: €300 each category; €400 overall winner. Judge: Dave Lordan. Rules: new writers only. Details: www.overtheedgeliteraryevents. blogspot.ie or write to Over the Edge, 3 Carbry Road, Newcastle, Co Galway. 31 AUG Exeter Flash Competition Flash: 250 words. Fee: £4. Prizes: £100; £50. Details: see www.

creativewritingmatters.co.uk. Park Publications Article Competition Article: 1000-1500 words. Theme: Why do I write? Prizes: £50; £25; £15. Details: www.parkpublications.co.uk/competitions.html UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED… Theme and genre are open. Entries should be original and unpublished. Postal entries should be printed on white A4 in a clear plain font. Include a separate cover sheet with the title, word count, your name, address and postcode, phone and email. Stories should be double-spaced with good margins.Where necessary include a large enough sae with sufficient postage. Always contact the organiser or check their website to confirm details.Writers’ Forum does not accept responsibility for errors in or changes to the information listed.



13/05/2015 15:21:07

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13/05/2015 10:45:54

Writing rooms

Where I write

Phil Barrington visits the Milton Keynes home of romantic comedy writer Carole Matthews

M

y latest novel, The Cake Shop in the Garden, is set in Milton Keynes where I live, as are many of my books. Milton Keynes is a much-maligned city – usually by people who’ve never been here. Most of the people who live here love it. It’s very green and the Grand Union canal meanders its way through the centre. We’ve lived in this house for about 10 years. It’s the house behind the one we lived in before. I used to look longingly out of my bedroom window at it – the attraction was that I could have a separate area to work in – and when it came up for sale, I snapped it up. The day we moved in I earmarked the top floor as my office. The movers were delighted to lug six filing cabinets up two flights of stairs! It’s a bright, airy space with a nice view over the park. It gives a slight separation between work and home. My room is very tidy – I can’t stand working in a mess. The paperwork piles up

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while I’m lost in my work in progress, so at the end of every book, I have a big clearout and get my desk spotless again. There’s a shelf above the desk for all my books, which I like to see. There’s also a postcard from my heroine, Mary Berry. She’s a big fan of my writing, which is lovely to know. To celebrate the publication of my 25th novel, my friend, the artist Tina Ashton, painted a lovely tree with heart-shaped leaves and each one has the name of one of my books in it. I was so thrilled that she had taken time to create something for me. I also have two original covers from A Cottage by the Sea and Calling Mrs Christmas on my wall, drawn by the fabulous Alice Tait. Lots of readers have sent me little gifts over the years – little dolls, plaques, pictures, paintings of my books by their children. They’re all in my office and I appreciate them all. I’ve had the desk and furniture for years. It’s all very scuffed around the

edges but I can’t get excited about looking for anything to replace it – there’s always something more interesting to do. If I had more space I’d like a seating area and maybe a chaise-longue. Other than that, this is pretty much perfect. The view doesn’t really provide inspiration but it’s nice to have a pretty outlook. At one point I had a shed in the garden to write in, but it just made me need an afternoon nap. I’m better with a brick wall in front of me. My partner, lovely Kev, runs the admin for me, so we have a computer in this room that we share. Sometimes he likes to chat so, if I need to concentrate on a tricky bit, I shut the door and he knows not to come in. I stay in the same place, at my computer, all day. I’m usually at my desk by eight and work through until six-ish with an hour for lunch. I’m a terrible sleeper, so I pull an insomnia shift two or three nights a week. I try very hard never to write at weekends. I think that’s the key to getting two books a year written. People are always looking for shortcuts, but there’s no other way than spending hours at a computer, with Radio 2 to keep me company.


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Writing – A Job with All Sorts of Opportunities for All Kinds of People by Phil Busby Do you fancy a challenge? What about the chance to make some money, get VIP access to major sporting and cultural events, or free holidays abroad? How would you like to look in the mirror and say, “Yeah – I did it!”

major publisher and turned into a book which now sells world wide. “The Writers Bureau has given me the confidence to follow my dreams,” Louise says. “My tutor was lovely, encouraging and offered me great constructive criticism.”

Well then, writing might be just up your street.

Another WB student, Martin Read, wanted to keep active in his retirement and his writing led to a great little bonus. “As a result of my cricket articles, I have been elected into The Cricket Writers Club – an organisation that counts experienced journalists among its members. One of the perks of this membership is a press card that gives me entry into all of England’s cricket stadium press boxes.” And there are not many that get in there.

People have some funny ideas about writing. As a profession, it’s not just for ‘special’ folk. Anyone can do it. If you love words, and stories, and you’re not afraid of hard work, that’s all you need. For the last 26 “My tutor was lovely, years The Writers encouraging and Bureau has been offered me great helping new constructive criticism.” writers get started in the business. Writers like Louise Kennedy, who struck gold when she started blogging about her life on a boat from the viewpoint of ... her cat. Baily Boat Cat was picked up by a

Then there’s Jacqueline Jaynes, who just loves to travel: “The Writers Bureau course has done everything I hoped it would and more. There was a clear progression through chapters so that my writing skills and confidence grew

Why Not Be A Writer!

As a freelance writer, you can earn very good money in your spare time, writing the stories, articles, books, scripts etc that editors and publishers want. Millions of pounds are paid annually in fees and royalties. Earning your share can be fun, profitable and creatively most fulfilling. To help you become a successful writer we offer you a first-class, home-study course from professional writers – with individual guidance from expert tutors and flexible tuition tailored to your own requirements. You are shown how to make the most of your abilities, where to find ideas, how to turn them into publishable writing and how to sell them. In short, we show you exactly how to become a published writer. If you want writing success – this is the way to start! Whatever your writing ambitions, we can help you to achieve them. For we give you an effective, stimulating and most enjoyable creative writing course… appreciated by students and acclaimed by experts. It’s ideal for beginners. No previous experience or special background is required. You write and study at your own pace – you do not have to rush. Many others have been successful this way. If they can do it – why can’t you?

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Louise Kennedy

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Martin Read

steadily with feedback from my tutor. The market research activities were invaluable for opening up potential new avenues for publication.” Those new avenues led to a travel website where Jacqueline started writing short articles. Soon she was asked to join the team, and now she and her husband get expenses paid trips all over the world in exchange for reviews! These are just some of the many inspirational true stories from Writers Bureau students. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t join them. Who knows, this time next year I could be writing about your success. With a 15-day trial and money back guarantee, there’s nothing to lose and potentially a whole new life to gain. So why not visit the website at www.writersbureau.com or call Freephone 0800 856 2008 for more information? Hannah Evans, Winchester “I’ve been published in The Guardian and Good Life earning £400. And now I’ve got my first book published by Bloomsbury called MOB Rule: Lessons Learned by a Mother of Boys. The Writers Bureau course provided me with structure, stopped my procrastination but most importantly it provided the impetus to try something different.”

Kris Roberts, Somerset “When I first saw my words in print it was life changing. Someone else had read my work, believed in it, paid for it, and put it out there for others to see. As more articles made it to press, my confidence grew and I found I wanted to inject some of myself into my writing. At the time of writing this I have received £1,197 for my work.” Jane Isaac, Northamptonshire When I started the Writers Bureau course, I wanted to explore avenues for my writing and develop and strengthen my personal style. I had no idea that it would lead to me being a published writer of novels and short stories. I still pinch myself when I receive emails and messages from readers who’ve enjoyed my work or when I give talks to book clubs and visit bookstores to do signings. These are magical moments that have changed my life – my dream has come true.” Please send me free details on how to become a successful, freelance writer:

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