Just to flag up my next SCVA short story course, linked to the 'Magnificent Obsessions' exhibition. It follows the usual format of a ten week course (with a break for half term) that addresses the central tenets of short story writing, while drawing inspiration from the exhibition. I am particularly excited by this exhibition as I believe it will be a marvellous jumping off point for creative writing. SCVA are taking bookings from the middle of August please telephone 01603 593199 from August 15th.
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I recently sent an email to a colleague explaining that my apparent flakiness (not my usual dependable self) was due to my life having been hijacked. Every so often a series of mistimed events crash through the door like a camouflaged bloke with big boots and seize valuable time. Life Hijacking is quite different from run of the mill interruptions that daily annoy and distract - like cold calling, equipment failure, visitors and demanding youths (anyone under 30 these days). This needy time thief rushes in and steals with an urgent insistence that cannot be ignored. Reader, I lost twelve whole days. Four to an urgent application form (not even mine) a form so badly formatted by the government (now there’s a surprise) that none of the information they required would line up in the appropriate boxes. It dawned painfully slowly (as we were working remotely between a PC and an ipad, and ipad’s don’t read forms the way PC’s do) so lots of work-a-rounds and a partial re-formatting by my talented daughter, won through in the end, phew…job done, back to real work, back to my to-do list. No. I find that the balustrade of my beach hut (repaired last year) is completely falling apart, rot has set in, it is dangerous and the hut has holiday makers due. I beg a favour and barter with a lovely friend with joinery skills, working as his sous joiner until 10pm each night. Then I paint it, I estimate this will take me three days, it takes six long days. Stuff happens, that’s life and no one came to any harm, nevertheless a couple of working weeks vanished. I continually appear to underestimate the time that tasks take. If like me, you are a list person and you will enjoy the deep satisfaction of crossing things off your list, along with the deeper and perverse satisfaction, of adding things and immediately crossing off items that were not on the list in the first place, indicating that you have achieved something extra - I hope you are still with me - then you are a committed list maker and quite possibly a little mad. My lists are not prioritised by order with most important at the top, least at the bottom – my items have numbers and, if urgent, a red * beside them. Anything with one of those must be completed that day. I begin with a weekly list and then break it down into days. I put a number beside each item denoting its importance. So I might have 4 one tasks, 3 two tasks, 5 four tasks and so on. I often succumb to the temptation to tackle a couple of number four or five tasks rather that the trickier (and important) number one tasks. And then there is filing. Lingering like a nasty smell from an unflushed drain and perennially on the list, filing is mostly dealt with by putting the four huge piles of papers and receipts out of my line of vision. Sometimes I have a vigorous hour at it, but the paperless office is a myth and anyway writers suffer from cuttings syndrome; bits of research, interesting articles and story ideas all end up in a pile and not knowing how to file them is a big disincentive. Certain things take longer than they used to, job applications for example. Once a covering letter and CV was required, not anymore; twelve pages is not uncommon all items matched to keys skills, competencies, essential and desirables. The interview may take two hours with a presentation or test, and don’t be surprised if you are sent home to produce a set of strategies that you will implement when in the post, which you may not get, but they get to keep and ‘lift’ your ideas: this is about three days’ work. Do your own time and motion study, write down just how long spend on any given task for a week. Then make a more realistic assessment of what you can achieve in a day. I am now actively putting less onto my daily list, today there are just three items that I believe are achievable. And note to self, 15 minutes filing a day would mean those piles will be gone in two months. Right now I am just trying to get back on track. A useful book on time management is ‘The Fifteen Minute Rule’ By Caroline Buchanan. I am involved in a mini literary festival as part of Active Fakenham week and along with some other talented writers, poets, script writers, children's authors and a social media guru.Workshops are running from Tuesday 25th - Friday 28th August at the bargain price of just £5 per session. So if you have ever felt like trying your hand at creative writing, or your writing needs a boost, then do go on to the website http://www.activefakenham.org.uk and book a place.
July's guest blogger is Hilary Custance Green a self-published author and a student from the 2014 cohort on The Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts 'Realities' short story course. These courses are linked to SCVA exhibitions and a new course will be booking soon. The 300 odd science-based men and women in their early twenties on this CRAC programme were looking forward to a lifetime of significant work. They would profit from a course that covered:
· Awareness of personal transferable skills and attributes · Skills and processes required for team building · Techniques needed for personal career management But me? In my early fifties? A jack of all trades, so poor at career management that I had amassed four degrees while my CV included seamstress, art college model, jobbing gardener and garden designer. I had spent more than twenty years as a sculptor – oh, and a wife and mother – was it too late? There was also the little matter of my NOVEL. Four years previously, I had made the momentous decision to stop making big, heavy sculptures of little use to the world, and try to add to the family finances. Because I still needed a creative activity that would be unaffected by age or physical infirmity, I started writing fiction while I studied Psychology. Writing is a craft needing much application, so I began with a ‘learning’ novel. When, several months down the line, I found Gary and John in bed with each other and very little idea of what would happen next, I put these chapters in a drawer and started again. In the meantime, I lucked in on a job with the Medical Research Council and eventually funding for a PhD. So I found myself drafting my first novel alongside my thesis. I (like to) think both were the better for the symbiosis. My first novel was eventually published at which point I discovered, as do all writers, that marketing was another skill needed in the author’s armoury. I was, am and probably will always will be, reluctant, idle and generally pissed off by the whole business of marketing my books. It’s a trade-off, though. I want to write, I want to be read and ideally I’d like to be paid, or at least not work at a loss. The inefficiency of the small indie publisher of my first novel, made me decide to do it myself. So I set up a one-person publishing firm, Threadgold Press (http://www.hilarycustancegreen.com/Hilary_Author_Website/NEWS.html) and published my next two novels. After which I felt a little more sympathetic to the original publisher, because publishing is, ideally, team work. This brings me back to the CRAC course. Our team of six plus a moderator had thrown ourselves off high places, run a campaign to sell toothbrushes, put on an edition of the 9 o’clock news (in real time) and listened to the CEOs of big companies telling us stories. We had worked intensely together and learned to depend on and support each other. One of the many tasks we crammed into those five days was an analysis of team roles. We used Belbin (http://www.belbin.com) to rate each other. There are eight or nine distinct roles you can play as part of a team. Unsurprisingly, the young postgrads were heaving with Plants (ideas guys), and this was, indeed, my major role too with a bit of Team Worker thrown in. A publishing company needs a Plant, but rather more importantly it needs Implementers, Co-ordinators, Shapers, Resource Investigators, Monitor Evaluators, Completer Finishers and Specialists. Team workers are also useful – but only if you have a team. It is not news that publishing and marketing a book is tricky if you are by nature a writer first, but today’s publishing environment leaves us little choice. There comes a point at which you need to decide how many of the team’s roles you are prepared to take on. Personally, I find that as long as some people read my books and get in touch to tell me whether my story worked or not, I feel justified in writing. So I set my goals manageably low – to make back the basic costs of publishing. I also (thank you CRAC) learned to play to my strengths. A couple of years ago, I started a blog (http://www.greenwritingroom.com). This is a very safe and comfortable space for a writer, with no pressure to sell. In the run up to my last publication I enrolled on a writing course (http://www.patriciamullin.com); I improved my writing, made new writing friends and sold some copies of my novel. I had a party and sold books in the village fair. There’s lots more I could do, but if the choice is between writing and selling, there’s no contest. The CRAC course left me with two things: a much better opinion of myself and, as I have only just realised, a lot of material for my last novel Border Line, in which a leader persuades a group of people, intent on suicide, to play games… Last week was competition week, well here at Meadow Cottage it was. Several big writing competitions close at the end of May and I was determined not to let those dates slip by without an entry. I have entered a novel, two short stories and for the first time a piece of flash fiction, sometimes called micro fiction. I revised this piece which I had written several years ago; there is a lot to be said for trawling through the short story folder and looking at the work with a fresh eye. Distance brings clarity and although there is often the kernel of a good story changes are necessary. Sometimes I think that the ‘voice’ in the story is wrong, I might alter the age of my protagonist, or add a contemporary touch. Just re-arranging the sentences and the structure can be enough. When you begin to have a body of short stories (almost enough for a collection) you need to check for repetition in style, or character and voice. It is easy write stories that have too strong a connection, themes in a collection can be appealing, nevertheless there needs to be sufficient variety to engage the reader; the most successful collections share this trait.
So what of the competitions? What can you expect from success, winning, being placed or commended? Winning a big competition such as the Bridport, Yeovil, Fish or Mslexia et al, will definitely impact on your writing career and may even hook you an agent and then a publisher. I don’t think I realised the importance of competitions for the writer until a few years ago. Being commended can be a little frustrating, but you can generally put that short story or novel into another competition. Competitions with an anthology are the best, because getting yourself into print is really gratifying. Entering on a regular basis can be quite expensive, so you need to set aside an ample budget for entries and rather like workshops and courses view competitions as part of your professional development. Being selected from a tough, competitive entry is gratifying and validating when so much of the achingly slow business of bringing writing to public attention is frustrating; competition success gives the writer the encouragement and incentive to keep going. Friends, who may know little about the writing world, suddenly prick up their ears and give you a bit of recognition too, which is cheering. Below is a link to the guest blog (Bridport) by Ian Nettleton – a local Norwich author who was runner up in the Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award 2014, for his novel The Last Migration. The blog is well worth reading and an extract from the novel is available to read on the Bridport website. https://www.bridportprize.org.uk/blog/just-when-you-think-you%E2%80%99ve-finished-ian-nettleton Ian Nettleton lives in Norwich. He has worked as a carer, a book seller, a teacher of English in Prague, in a post room and, after completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the UEA, he now teaches creative writing at the Open University, the UEA, Wensum Lodge and Cinema City, Norwich. He has worked freelance for BBC TV as a writer/presenter (summarising classic novels in sixty seconds) and appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book. The Last Migration was runner-up in the Bath Novel Award 2014. He is currently half way through a first draft of a novel about a boy whose father is an exorcist. Photo: Martin Figura This month (May) I would like to introduce you to my guest blogger Molly Barrett. I have been working with Molly for over a year as her creative mentor. While Molly has an extraordinary range of talents, our mentoring sessions have focused on the development of her website, a growing and much needed resource. Our digressions during this year have also been very interesting.
Molly Barrett - Biography Following her childhood near the North Downs, Molly Barrett studied in Norwich, graduating in graphic design as well as eventually settling there, and taking her folk music a step further in the great singing pubs. Writing has always been there in the background for Molly, be it copy-writing, as an adjunct to the work of a self employed jobbing designer, or a keenly phrased letters of protest and the occasional song. There is more to follow. As a degenerative impairment has made itself more apparent Molly has become aware of the poverty of access to necessary information, hence creating this website www.showmetheaccess.co.uk This website is about making information about accessibility of goods, services and venues much more immediate. Why? Currently the search is not only frustrating and time-consuming, and therefore costly, but proves to be a barrier to inclusion in the workplace, education, and any other aspect of life you can imagine. How? The idea is simple. A site hosting web links to video. The aim is a resource for not only people with impairments, and people who provide the services to them, such as hotels, airports, shops, dentists, etc, but also facilitators such as occupational therapists, support workers, teachers, hard-pressed family members, and others. Links to video on sites such as YouTube or Vimeo or myhotelvideo will be uploaded by the experts, i.e. the people who know about access, who are the people with impairments themselves; or by the professionals e.g. OTs and social workers; or by the providers, e.g. manufacturers, retailers, venue managers. This is not to forget the inclusion of the written word too, making it accessible to screen readers and search engines, as well as to deaf people. Audio commentary describing the action would also be extremely valuable, as would signing. In time, it is proposed to include the capability of people to file reviews of the items, as well as of the helpfulness of the videos. The Chocolate Teapot and the Guillemot Egg - musings on some fundamental principles of design. Recently I received a gift of some gorgeous planet-friendly shower gel that smells good enough to eat. Like the great majority of such eco products, it came packed in a nice recyclable cylindrical plastic bottle. I'm canny by now at this stage in the game and so I carefully decanted it into my now empty bottle from the supermarket-bought "mainstream" gel. When I'm out on the road and pick up a small bottle of mineral water people might think I'm picky, searching through the different brands on offer. I am not even fussed whether it's still or fizzy, I'm just looking for a square bottle. Most of you will know what I'm on about by now: the hazards and frustration that ensue when something rolls on the floor. As always, it is no bad idea to look at what nature does. The guillemot's egg is something the parent wants to keep close to it, especially since they tend to lay their eggs on bare cliffs. The precise shape of the guillemot's egg above all others prevents it rolling long distances but instead keeps it moving in a tight circle. On the other hand, it's reasonable to surmise that apples and oranges have the capacity to roll away from the parent tree, so aiding the process of dispersing the seeds. Which is precisely why it is a good idea to keep your grocery shopping well restrained heading home by car – the last thing you need is a piece of fruit jammed under your brake pedal! Universal design is a noble goal, and one of the basic parameters is safety. Being mindful of the hazards of things that roll being used by people with obstructed or impaired vision or balance should be towards the top of that safety list. Someone who could devise hexagonal AA and AAA batteries to fit existing devices would be doing us all a favour, just like the nameless heroes who introduced holes into the design of caps of felt tip pens. Unlike chocolate, they don't melt in the mouth, and this clever modification reduces the danger of children choking on them. My novel Gene Genie has another life, a life that is hidden from me. That’s the strange thing about writing a novel, after the initial flurry of excitement at publication off it goes. It’s rather like your child going to school, except that the novel never comes home again. No. It wings its way out into the ether and you have no idea what has become of it, unless of course it becomes a best seller. In which case you are feted and fawned over, appear on daytime telly and get a jar of jam for appearing at a literary festival. None of this has happened to me, yet. But each year in February I get a pleasant surprise, my royalty statement arrives. It is pleasant, because I am in the habit of forgetting all about royalties. It is a joy to receive even a modest sum of money into my bank account in what is the grimmest month of the year, both in terms of the gloomy darkness and the horrible bills coming in. ALCS is the Authors’ Licencing and Collecting Society and it does the important job of collecting and distributing royalties to authors. In the past this has been a short statement with little detail, but this year it has a breakdown. I now know that Gene Genie is used somewhere in the NHS (quite a good book for discussing the ethics of sperm and egg donation). Parts have been photocopied in a language school, general school, the government and higher and further education and somewhere in the Nordic countries and the EU is appears to be used frequently. So now, rather like a micro-chipped pet with a tracking device, I know where Gene Genie has been for the past twelve months, gadding about the UK and Europe. ALCS is a great organisation, it champions copyright for authors and wants everyone to wise up to copyright www.alcs.co.uk/wiseup It states that ‘a typical income of a professional writer is around £11,000 per annum and 77% of journalists recently surveyed said that their income was insufficient to support themselves…’ I am very grateful to ALCS for working on the behalf of hard-pressed writers. Thanks goes to those organisations that recognise that the simple act of photocopying sections of a novel requires paying the author. Click on the link above to wise up to copyright. My word of mouth read this month. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. I had the pleasure of attending the Words & Women Two (published by Unthank Books) anthology book launch, which contains my story The Siren. Another beautifully produced anthology enriched by many intriguing stories. Short fiction gives writers a chance to experiment and readers an opportunity to dive in to mysterious worlds. I love the form and recommend you buy and read as much short fiction as possible. Laura Stimson’s Cornflake Girl a brilliant story and a worthy first prize winner. Coming soon: WELCOME TO LITTLE EDEN: THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS AT THE GARAGE THIS APRIL After their successful production, 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane, Chalk Circle Theatre Company returns to The Garage in April (14th – 18th) with an absurd and funny musical that takes a satirical look at nationalism. An alarmingly normal man is kicked out of the house by his wife. After hours of walking, tired and lost in the middle of nowhere, Adam needs a lift and a sofa for the night. An old school friend with a dark past arrives and they spend the night in the open, dreaming up Little Eden, the best of all possible worlds where everything is for the best. Or is it? 14th-18th April, 7.30 pm. The Garage, Norwich, Tickets: Theatre Royal Box Office, 01603 630 000 Please get in touch for any more information. 0780 5515159. https://www.facebook.com/chalkcircletheatrecompany http://www.chalkcircletheatrecompany.com/ www.wordsandwomennorwich.blogspot.co.uk Do join us at the Words and Women Two anthology book launch on International Women's Day 8th March 4-6pm at Fusion at the Forum, Millenium Plain Norwich, NR2 1PE Men, women and children welcome. My short story The Siren, won a place in this anthology. For more information go to www.wordsandwomennorwichblogspot.co.uk
You may think this question has no link to writing and creativity. Well maybe, maybe not. But I have fallen into a sartorial decline and I fear it is affecting my creative work and my self–esteem. Until I moved back to the country I had never worn anything that was quilted, the only quilt I owned resided on a bed. And for quite some time I believed that the adoption of the puffa–style gilet by those living in rural idylls was because, if truth be told, they lacked any interest in clothing. I thought the winter wardrobe in the countryside synonymous with sartorial indifference; I was wrong. Worryingly, I am taking on a similar appearance.
This, dear reader, is what I am wearing today. Fingerless grey woollen gloves. Brown velvet trousers (old and worn), thick socks (with woollen walking socks over the them), a thermal vest (black, with lace and therefore pretensions of femininity, except it can’t be seen), a colourful t-shirt Marks & Spencer circa God knows when), a blue long-sleeved t-shirt, a Crew green jumper (with a zip at the neck) topped off with the ubiquitous aforementioned Musto puffa in red (and as if that weren't bad enough) quilted with brown faux suede trim. Worse, because some of this colour combination matches this ensemble looks intentional. It is not. It has been chosen solely on the basis of warmth and the ability to go about my daily business, without letting my core temperature drop to a level that would require me to liberate the metallic anti-hypothermia sheet placed in the car boot in case I get trapped overnight by the road side in a snowstorm awaiting rescue. When I lived in cities — Norwich and London — I seemed to manage the business of dressing for winter rather better. I purchased quite a lot of clothing from Toast, a favourite of mine, especially the sale bargains. Their clothes are sturdily made, fashionable in a cool, retro artisan manner that has proven so popular since the global crash of 2008. They didn't look too bad on me, slightly eccentric, mildly bohemian and with addition of quirky jewellery about right for a writer and artist. So I don’t quite know what has gone wrong. It hasn't helped that my clothes are scattered throughout the cottage in a displaced refugee manner – there is practically no storage here. I always used to pack away my summer clothes and then hang my winter clothes, that way I knew what I owned and when to wear it. Only recently did the linens of summer make it into storage and the winter woollens make it out onto shelves, not hangers, no storage remember, but small cramped shelves and various scattered drawers. If you cannot see your clothes it is infinitely more difficult to end up wearing anything approximating style. Nevertheless, I am left with the disconcerting notion that all this is just an excuse and that I am the problem, that I have lost my way sartorially and that what once looked trendy in the city, now makes me look like a batty old country women who has just come in from feeding the chickens and scratching the sow’s back. My parents had a friend Rae Morse, who was just such a woman, once when I had undergone disastrous surgery to remove my wisdom teeth – surgery that left me so beaten up that the friendly GP thought I had gone through a car windscreen and he was as perplexed as anyone by the clear imprint in livid bruising of a shoe print on the right of my chest – anyway Rae, who had once, poor soul, endured a frontal lobotomy saw the state of me (I was on liquidised rice pudding through a straw for ten days) and so she brought round a copy of Kipling’s ‘If’ for me to read and take succour from and Rae was dressed in a similar garb to my current offering. Much as I admire that breed of remarkable doughty older woman, (she had maintained a fleet of armoured vehicles during the Second World War) I had never imagined that I might come to be mistaken for one of them. All this explains why I spend my evenings pouring over paint colour charts; it’s easier to dream decoration makeover than a clothing makeover. I don’t know where to begin. A trendy pair of warm country boots would be a start, but they appear to cost as much as a winter’s supply of logs. There are country shops stuffed full of country–woman clothing, this dear reader is a look to go for at your peril. Country women with cash and dash are apparently clad in checked tweeds with pastel notes. I kid you not, and blouses with a trim of Liberty lawn at the cuff and collar and pastel wellies. I believe you have to be named Georgiana or Cressida to wear them; these garments are for women who are unlikely to come up close and personal to mud. In the meantime my displacement activity is to take my colour chart to purchase a sample pot of F&B Pavilion grey paint, but will they sell it to me, dressed as I am? Perhaps if I slip on my Toast coat, the one with the quirky button holes in mixed colour threads, I might then be permitted to buy an ‘on trend’ paint colour for my cottage and show that I do, after all, have some style. Enjoy this delightful tribute (see link below) to the shopkeepers and artisans of Lambs Conduit Street in London: not one of them is sartorially challenged! http://www.folkclothing.com/journal/whats-lambs-conduit-street-all-about/ February’s Word of Mouth Book was given to me by a dear friend from America. ‘Things I Don’t Want to Know on writing’ by Deborah Levy. “ Precise, visceral …[A] dreamlike book of ideas and memories.” Publishers Weekly (starred review) I am thrilled to hear that my short story The Siren has been selected by the judge Sarah Ridgard, author of Seldom Seen. The Siren will be published with 21 others in the 2015 competition anthology on the 8th March, International women's day. For more information and a full list of winners please go to http://wordsandwomennorwich.blogspot.co.uk Congratulations to Laura Stimpson the overall winner. An extraordinary thing a 'New Year' lying as it does like a shiny newly-minted coin in the palm of possibility. To me, 2015 does appear to have more than a glint of hope and creative opportunity. Last year I was looking for a herald, a sign that I should keep going (keeping going is very important if you are a struggling writer.) That herald brought me some modest success, a competition win, inclusion in the Words and Women anthology and a commendation for Casting Shadows in the Yeovil International Literary Prize. On the 22nd December I received the best possible Christmas present in the form of an Arts Council grant and I am so grateful. I was also advised and supported by The Writers Centre Norwich and I thank them also. Now I have a few months free from fiscal fear in which to complete the re-draft of Casting Shadows for an agent. So I am embracing this bright new year full of hope and excitement at the creative opportunities to come. Fulfilling your talents is a phrase that recently struck a cord with me, fulfilling my talents is my greatest wish for 2015. Jessie Burton author of the acclaimed novel 'The Miniaturist' stated in an article in last weeks Sunday Times, that it took 'four years of dogged determination and seven or eight edits...'
I hope that my students and writer friends will also be fulfilling their talents in 2015. Good luck everyone, have a creative New Year. My Sainsbury Centre students have reached the editing and revision stage. All have completed shorts stories linked to the current Realities exhibition. It has been fascinating to read the wide variety of fiction derived from this diverse exhibition. A few have chosen the same painting and yet their stories are worlds apart, this link between writing and the visual – the sister arts – brings about an exciting exchange between narrative and image. This type of site–specific course is ideal for novice writers, it is helpful to choose an image or artefact as inspiration. Often in workshops, students are given a topic or a spark word, but I find that a painting, sculpture or artefact encourages exploration through research which leads to inventive and original ideas. There are stories buried in the research and they emerge into narratives that grip the reader. This particular cohort hit the ground running, when asked to write a five hundred word opening, many returned with a full length story of almost three thousand words! Now these words need taming, reducing and moulding into a narrative that is lean, taught and gripping. Compelling writing isn’t flabby, repetitive or meandering. How to go about this task of training the group to edit? The maximum length of the stories was supposed to be 2,200 to 2,500 as a maximum, but rather like motorists the majority have been sticking closely to the upper speed limit. I use this length as it is close to the majority of short story competition word counts. It means that they will then have a tailor–made story to enter. As yet no one has embarked on a pithy bit of flash fiction. Taming this surfeit of words proves difficult. I suggest parking sections at the back of the story for the time being and later in folder on their computers, which is what I do. Currently I have a number of pages tucked away at the back of my novel; whole scenes have been removed and parked in the unnecessary words parking–lot behind the end of the novel. Sometimes I resort to issuing an ultimatum, saying cut five hundred words, this can induce panic as to them the suggestion seems akin to slicing it up with a rapier. But I have found that simply removing five hundred words from my short stories improves them enormously. Editing has never damaged my work it has only ever improved it. Editing is demanded by agents and then publishers, my current novel has been edited on several occasions and now requires re–drafting and I doubt this will be the last time. I was interested to see that Ian Nettleton, a runner up in the Bath novel prize has reworked his novel several times over a number of years. This is typical and needs to be understood that the process on the path to publication which is littered with parked words, scenes and sometimes characters. Students of writing need to appreciate that is there is a craft to writing, there is a whittling away at the words until one has fashioned a work of fiction that has a form and is fit for purpose. I am sure we have all read novels by luminary authors where the deft hand of an editor is no longer present, they have simply become too grand to be edited and this is not a good thing. The gimlet eye of an editor is to be valued. So find a parking–lot and excise the extraneous, over–written and the repetitive. On a sadder note, I have only just heard that The Guardian journalist Peter Chippindale (Chip) died in August 2014. Peter and I lived together in the nineteen–seventies. After we parted romantically we remained good friends, but I lost touch with him when he moved to Cornwall where I tried to visit him but he had moved on with no forwarding address. I have many happy memories of our time together. Our first date being somewhat bizarre as after lunch we went on a tour of an estuary where body various parts had been discovered, at the time Chip was investigating the notorious Torso Murder Case; I met number of gangland villains thereafter. I was present at the Thorpe Committal Proceedings in Minehead where I met Norman Scott, whom I recall had a fine collection of art Deco pottery an interest that we shared. Peter was great fun, with a brilliant anarchic humour; he once ‘liberated’ an RSPCA box for me, it has three adorable kittens looking pleadingly at empty milk bottles, it is in my sitting room and continues to attract comment. I was with Chip in his journalistic heyday; sadly it seems he never bettered those times professionally. The following link will take you to The Guardian obituary by his good friend, the journalist David Leigh. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/13/peter-chippindale On holiday in France With our kitten Mars
4th July1945 – 10th August 2014 Several years ago my ‘portfolio career’ led me by chance to become an illustrator. This wasn’t such a leap, given that I had trained at Central St Martins and worked as a textile designer. I went on to become an illustrator, with an agent, a portfolio and various commissions from illustrating recipe of the day for the evening newspaper, City Limits; À la Carte; the cover for a feminist education journal (whose title escapes me) an album cover, the stars for Woman’s Journal (all twelve months – very handy fiscally) manufacturers and the occasional book jacket. Then I moved away from London, in the days prior to the Internet and sending images down the line, biking my work to the likes of IPC became impossible so I altered career tack once again. In issue 63 of Mslexia there is a very interesting article by Debbie Taylor about the process and similarity to others of the cover design for her novel Herring Girl. Those who don’t write often assume that the author has some say over the cover that a publisher commissions for their work. Taylor states ‘…the subtext of Porter’s email came through loud and clear: “We’re committed to this image. Please don’t make a fuss.” And when pressed. “we prefer not to have an author’s input in the early stages.” My own thought being that by the time you reach the latter stages it will be too late. What I have noticed, with dismay, is the parlous state of cover design. If you scan the supermarket shelves, where many book buyers source their reading material, you will be met with a depressing row of generic covers. Taylor’s article goes on to show cover clichés (and they are legion), for a novel set in Africa, and here she shows seven examples, you get an enormous yellow sun — usually setting, so lots of red — a tree, and occasionally a lone figure in shadow. Certain covers denote genre and allude to the novels of other successful books such as Kate Atkinson’s book Life After Life, this particular look Taylor states denotes “Literary, commercial historical.” Fonts also express genre, historical fiction has complex font, lots of loops and medieval looking flicks; here we are in quill pen land. Taylor goes on to list ten cover clichés, here are two: faceless woman (headless, averted from behind) = literary, for female. Woman, legs only, bright pastels = contemporary romance; or what you and I would call Chick Lit. Of course what lies behind this plethora of lazy mediocrity are sales. Publishing is a business not a charity and books are a commodity and marketing departments have cleverly trained the book buying public to know a genre immediately through the image on the cover. I find this lack of design choice immensely depressing, especially when you think back to the nineteen eighties, something of a heyday for innovative cover design by talented illustrators like Griselda Holderness and Chole Cheese, who has a wonderful illustration for Cheknov on her website www.cholecheese.co.uk Occasionally there is a glimmer of hope as small imprints and even sometimes larger publishing houses commission an illustrator who has made a name for themselves as an artist or printmaker, I’m thinking here of the nature inspired prints of Mark Hearld (Gods Own Country by Ross Raisin) and Angie Lewin (Salt by Jeremy Page.) Dan Mogford designed the cover for The Book of Silence by Sara Maitland which is beautiful in its simplicity, textured and with inverted commas indented, it is restrained and perfectly matched to the content. Hope lies with self–published authors, small indie publishers and competitions. East Anglian Writers have sponsored a competition The Book By the Cover for the best cover design to be voted on by its members from the books shortlisted for the annual East Anglian Book Awards http://www.edp24.co.uk/east_anglian_book_awards_2014_2_17469 Also take a look at www.hilarycustancegreen.com and the alternative covers for her novel Borderline, the second (the result of a competition) with the figure, is beautifully resolved and intriguing. I got to redesign my e-book cover for Gene Genie— given how important it is to have a clear image when it will be so small — I am pleased that the refreshed design met that brief. My Word of Mouth recommended read for November is: Sculptor’s Daughter by Tove Jansson published by Sort Of Books. London. An idiosyncratic, magical memoir. Also a beautiful book to hold, with photographs of the author, her family and her childhood — with a bright red cloth spine — great design. ONE MONTH TO DEADLINE!
WORDS AND WOMEN'S SHORT PROSE COMPETITION IS OPEN FOR ENTRIES: FICTION, MEMOIR, CREATIVE NON-FICTION AND LIFE-WRITING - First prize £600 & publication in our anthology Words and Women: 2 20 shortlisted entries will also be published. Judge Sarah Ridgard DEADLINE: 15th November, 2014. See http://wordsandwomennorwich.blogspot.co.uk for details. I have that back to school feeling, partly because I begin teaching at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts (SCVA) again on the 1st Oct. I always get a buzz of excitement when a new course starts, any new cohort of students are full of creative surprises. I have no idea how much or how little writing they have done, or whether some are artists with an interest in writing, or writers with an interest in art. Occasionally I have a couple of poets, who end up teaching us all something about the economy of words, juxtaposition and metaphor. We always begin my courses with a talk about the exhibition from a knowledgeable SCVA curator and I get as much out of this as my students. I long ago decided not to get ahead of my students by seeing the exhibition before they do, this allows me to approach the work with the same fresh enthusiasm as the participants and that is another reason that October is an exciting month.
These articles caught my eye this month. The Author (Journal of The Society Of Authors —autumn 2014 edition). It might come as news to you that when authors give talks, readings and interviews at our thriving literary festival circuit they are unpaid. I say unpaid, at Hay and Dartington (Ways With Words) you might be offered a packet of shortbread or half a dozen bottles of ‘very bad wine’ Caroline Blake Agent said: ‘Hay enrages me – they offer half a dozen bottles of very bad wine, and most writers can’t carry them unless they go by car’ She added, ‘I think they circulate the same half–dozen bottles around.’ Another Society of Author member states in the article. ‘I do get cross when you take in, say, 500 people paying £8.00 each and are paid not a penny out of £4000…no rock group or comedian would dream of accepting such a deal.’ It does seem extraordinary that this regime of authors being unpaid for what is essentially a performance with a large ticket price, has traditionally been unpaid. It appears this regime has grown out of notion that festivals are publicity opportunities were the author might sell books or gain sales from the publicity, but that makes no sense either, a comedian for example, would collect a fee or share of the ticket sales and sales from the resulting DVD and merchandise. Fortunately this is now changing and the article goes on to sight the Musician’s Union campaign ‘Work Not Play’ because they are in fact suffering from the same pecuniary issues. A literary festival is live entertainment and as such the performers should be remunerated either by fee or by share. It appears that Chipping Norton is leading the way with mutual profit sharing. So perhaps an equitable way of paying authors for their contributions will be found. This whole notion of not paying writers has grown over the years and the Internet is strongly implicated in this push for free content. Recently a friend, who was being helpful, forwarded an email to me from a woman who was ‘offering’ editing work. She had a great deal to edit and her offer was to pay £50 for the task, clearly having no idea that there might actually be an accepted hourly rate for this job and having no idea of the existence of the Society of Editors and Proof Readers or The Society of Indexers, where she could find a professional to do the job and discover what the correct fee range would be. Would she, I wondered, post this offer of work out to plumbers? ‘I have a bathroom I want plumbed in and can offer you 50 quid.’ Probably not. If creatives cannot live, albeit modestly, then they will be forced to stop creating this article by Robert McCrum http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/02/bestseller-novel-to-bust-author-life shows the chilling fiscal reality for authors in the current environment. The section below is taken from the Society of Authors blog (July 2014) written by chief executive Nicola Soloman, it shows the depressing income decline for authors in recent years. 'In 2013 ALCS commissioned Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute part of University of London), to conduct some independent research into authors' earnings in the UK today. Here is what they found:
There is an amusing piece by the author Kate Long in the current edition of Mslexia, under the heading ‘when it all went horribly wrong.’ Kate, who in 2005 had a best-seller in the Sunday Times list and also serialised on Radio 4, was at that time new to the literary world. She was invited to a book group who had read her novel, this involved a 200 mile round trip, costing her £100 and no expenses were paid. Gathered together were twenty 'elderly ladies,' who then proceeded to forcefully trash her book, no one had enjoyed the novel and Kate sat there mortified as they explained why they disliked it so much. She states that she learned that she could get through this dreadful experience politely, that despite all the criticism thrown at her, she could carry on writing (now the author of seven novels). And she realised that no event would ever be so bad again. From her re–telling it sounds as if they spoke as if she wasn't even in the room; it is extraordinary how rude people can be to writers. I hope that in the future the public will understand that writers, artists, musicians et al have bills to pay and live by their talent. Also that there is a rate for the job and that you can always ask for an estimate or quote. Most creative people I know under–charge and will frequently work unremunerated should the work be interesting enough and lead on to something more, frequently it doesn't, and this plays in to the hands of the ‘free’ content type of individual or organisation. A strange phenomenon I have encountered is the notion that the rate of pay at a local authority adult institute is the proper remuneration package for an author giving a talk or workshop, more than once I have had to mention the Society of Authors in order to clear up this misunderstanding. This sort of thing doesn't happen to mathematicians or scientists, no one seems to suggest that the marginalised and socially excluded in deprived communities would benefit from the input of unpaid physicist. If you are an artistic creator these offers of engagement for no remuneration are frequent. I have learned my lesson. I once sat in nine hours of project meetings and realised that everyone in that room was being paid for their time apart from me. The project never came off and my preparation work was also unpaid. Only last year I went on a hundred mile round trip for a two and half hour meeting where I had prepared and made a presentation, for another project that never materialised. I now offer a one hour meeting gratis, ask (although don’t often receive) travel expenses and if I am asked to prepare a presentation I request the fee structure, usually there isn't one, the assumption is that I won't need paying. As creators we must ask what the budget is and present a professional no–nonsense fee structure for commissioners to respond to, hopefully this will set the tone. My Word of Mouth book this month is for anyone who is interested in writing: Stephen King 'On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft' I am pleased to announce that my novel Casting Shadows was 'Commended' in the 2014 Yeovil Literary Prize - what a lovely boost.
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