During the last three months of 2021 I focussed on writing my circus novel, and thanks to enormous help and support in Nancy Stohlman’s Flash Novel Mastermind course, I completed a full first draft before Christmas. Its working title is Thistles in the Cirrus, which is clown-speak for Things in the Circus.
My number one priority for 2022 is to do a comprehensive edit of the circus novel and move it forward from there.
At the same time I have started submitting shorter work to journals and competitions. I will be writing new work, and I also have a fair number of flashes and short stories sitting in my ‘unpublished’ file which I will be sending out.
Once the circus novel is at the next stage and I have sent it to first readers, I will be turning to another work in progress. More about that when the time comes.
In the meantime I will be posting news and thoughts about things writerly here at least once a month, and in February I will run another competition, so look out for that.
Happy writing and reading, and do share your writing plans for the year ahead.
Indie publishing is a vital part of the book world. It enables unagented writers like me to get our books out in the world. But indie publishers not only operate on a shoestring, with tiny profit margins; they also swim in a sea where the big fish – the Big 5 publishers – get most of the publicity, reviews in the national press and book awards. Why? Because those big publishers have the financial clout.
So it is down to us, the readers (I’m a reader as well as a writer) to do help redress the balance. Here are 8 ways we can all do our bit to help independent publishing survive and thrive:
1 Buy direct from indie publishers. That way their income is (unless they choose to offer promotional discounts) the full cover price of the book.
2 Use social media to spread the word about a book you enjoy: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok (if you know how that works!) and any others I don’t even know about!
3 Review books you like – on your own blog if you have one, and also on Goodreads and Amazon (if it will let you). Even a couple of lines about a book is valuable.
4 Tell a friend, or two. Word of mouth is hugely powerful.
5 Ask your local bookshop to stock a book you’ve enjoyed. Having books on display, available for potential purchasers to browse, really boosts them.
6 Ask your local library to buy a book you’ve enjoyed. You might be surprised how amenable libraries are to this.
And, particularly now, in the run-up to Christmas:
7 Buy books you’ve enjoyed as Christmas presents for your family and friends. Some indie publishers offer Christmas boxes with other goodies alongside their books. Louise Walters Books for example, supplies local Banbury cakes with her books.
8 Submit your favourite books of year to the end-of-year readers’ listings such as that published by The Guardian.
It’s wonderful to have support from other writers. In the run-up to publication of my new novella, I had the great pleasure of talking with the brilliant writer Charmaine Wilkerson, who I have got to know through the international flash fiction community.
CW: Cath, it was a pleasure to read through your lovely novella, In the Sweep of the Bay. Your story spans decades and generations within the life of the family at the centre of this story with such finely textured language and profound insights. How would you describe this novella in one line?
CB: It’s the story of a long marriage and the persistence of happiness, in spite of all obstacles.
CW: Where did the idea of the couple at the centre of the story, Ted and Rene, come from?
CB: I don’t know! Did I see a couple like them, in that café on the seafront in Morecambe that they visited on a day out? I wonder. Certainly I went to that café, and the scene was the first section of the book that I wrote, a snapshot of Ted and Rene in later life. It was a stand-alone flash originally and I called it Keeping the Magic Alive. Thinking about it, that could have been the title of the book – it’s what’s at the core of it.
CW: One of the things I appreciate about all of your writing, not only in this novella, is your use of small, telling details in a story. Often, those details evoke a sense of place, not the least of which is the English bay, Morecambe, which is referred to in the title of the story. Which element tends to come first in terms of inspiration for your story ideas- location, character, or event?
CB: Character, I think, always. Or rather, characters moving through their lives. I see the action scrolling out like a film. You know how in a film you can ‘read’ the characters’ emotions on their faces? That’s what I hope I can conjure up for reader in prose.
CW: In this novella, the sense of place includes the interior settings evoked through your storytelling. The buzz of comradeship at the ceramics factory, the coat shop, a hotel lobby, a marital bed. Do these details just come to you in the writing or do you find you take notes in your daily life which then lend themselves to story scenes?
CB: I do wish I was good at keeping notes, because we are surrounded by characters for stories as we walk down the street, any street, on any day. But I don’t carry a notebook. I do take photographs, though; I think I have a strong visual sense, and (I hope) good intuition.
CW: The end of the story is intriguing. I don’t want to give it away here but I do want to mention that it leaves the reader thinking, is this based on a true story?
CB: No, this is pure fiction.
CW: You frequently publish short stories, in particular, flash fiction? What about your longer projects? What can readers expect to see from you next?
CB: I like the shorter forms, novella, short story, flash fiction. I used to say I’d never write a novel. But I have a couple of longer projects. One is a novel I started in NaNoWriMo in 2018, set in Nepal in the aftermath of an earthquake. The other is what think will end up as a novel based on the life of my Auntie Phyllis, who was a famous circus artiste. I feel a responsibility to write her story. Though, unhelpfully, she left few words, only pictures, so what I write has to be fiction.
However, I may just write another novella – or even two! – first. I do seem to have an affinity with the novella form. I’ve tried writing novellas-in-flash without success, but I’m thinking of having a go at a novelette-in-flash, in which each separate story is under 500 words. I’m taking advantage of Nancy Stohlman’s prompts for FlashNano this month to help me with that.
In the Sweep of the Bay is available for order through independent publisher Louise Walters Books.
Charmaine Wilkerson
Charmaine Wilkerson is an American writer who lives in Italy. Her award-winning flash fiction can be found in Best Microfiction 2020 and numerous anthologies and magazines. Her story How to Make a Window Snake won the Bath Novella-in-Flash Award in 2017 and the Saboteur Award for Best Novella in 2018. Her debut novel Black Cake is due to be published in 2022.
In the last of my current series of guest posts from authors with new books out, a big welcome to Drew Gummerson with his thoughts on that most crucial aspect of writing – the editing process.
Certain books, written quickly, are infamous; Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, dashed off while on the bog, written in a cramped hand along the length of a single roll of toilet paper(*), Charles Bukowski’s Post Office, 2 weeks in the making, squashed between Bukowski’s bar brawls and unsuccessful attempts at picking up Women(*), (his next book, 3 days later(*)).
(Sequestered once in hotel room Bukowski refused to appear on same bill as one and only Burroughs, William (now he was editor; cut text with scissors, scatter text across floor, shoot heroin, piece text back together. For many years Burroughs carried pages of Naked Lunch (deconstructed / constructed) gripped with single elastic-band in suitcase across Paris / Tangier / Interzone.(*))
But for most of us, as Morrissey sang, These Things Take Time.
(And I know that I’m the most inept that ever stepped…)
The best advice I ever got about editing came backwards through a crude joke on The Inbetweeners. This crude joke was about having a numb hand and masturbation.
It’s better all round if you no longer feel it’s yours. (**)
When I finished the first draft of Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel I put it away for six months.
It was only then I had the right perspective to be brutal, see what worked / what didn’t. So I could slash and burn. And, I honestly couldn’t remember where it was going.
It was fresh.
And that’s where the real work started.
In this excellent New York Times article, Jenny Offill talks of how she put extracts of her new novel Weather onto poster-boards and it was only, through time, by looking at them, she could ascertain which ones sparkled, which ones weren’t merely clever.
In that first draft it’s all too easy, like Alice falling down her well, to be pleased with yourself. Time gives clear head to tidy up (delete) these sections which don’t sparkle, aren’t clever (I mean, who wrote this shit?).
On twitter Ronan Hession (writer of the wonderful Leonard and the Hungry Paul(**)) gave the Sound Advice of, when editing, to read the chapters in reverse order. This,
“1. Stops you getting distracted by the story.
2. Reveals a lot about flow… if a book reads well backwards it’s a good indication that it reads well forwards.”
Same as putting text away in drawer it is about finding a different way of looking / disrupting gaze.
His editing process was to write reams and reams of stuff trying to find the character. It was only by writing in character’s voice that the nuggets of genius that made it into the story came out.
Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel was written on my iPhone, sitting at my kitchen table, most often before I went to work. Just an hour or two.
Having once been an obsessive writer I made a deal (with myself) a number of years ago that I would keep my evenings free for movies, music, books etc etc etc (wine).
In those few hours, like Offill I ended up with many dozens of pieces / fragments / sketches.
The trick was to work on them work on them work on them and, as Saunders suggests, find the heart of what you are trying to say.
(*) – This is not exactly true.
(**) – This is exactly true.
Drew Gummerson is the author of The Lodger and Me and Mickie James. His latest book, Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel, is to be published in November 2020 by Bearded Badger Publishing
I pleased to welcome children’s author Emma Rea as my guest this month, with her thoughts on writing rules and breaking them, in particular that vexed issue of showing versus telling.
When I was at school, I had a wonderful English teacher (who herself was taught by CS Lewis) and she said several things that stayed with me. One of them was her explanation of the trellis and the rose.
She was teaching us Shakespearean sonnets, and she showed us the form: the three quatrains rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, followed by a couplet, rhyming gg. She explained the iambic pentameter. We all knew the rules.
Then she started telling us how Shakespeare broke the rules. Using half-rhymes, caesura, enjambement. We grew confused.
And she explained that in all writing, there is both form – the trellis to which the writing must cling – and the author’s insight and imagination – the rose. Without a trellis, the rose will flop. But if it follows the trellis rigidly, left, right, left, right, there will be no life in the writing at all.
I write children’s fiction, not sonnets, but her words still ring usefully in my head. I’m always trying to work out what form, or ‘rules’, work in writing and which rules can be bent.
And one rule I’m wary of is ‘show don’t tell’. We’re always told this, and of course it’s important, but a confident writer will know when to break it, and simply tell the reader certain things. This confidence is enormously appealing. Dickens’ first sentence of Bleak House is ‘London.’ A later paragraph starts ‘Fog everywhere.’ He goes on to show us, but he hasn’t been afraid of telling us, too. And we immediately get that delicious feeling that we’re in the safe hands of a writer who knows exactly what they’re doing.
I think this tension between telling and showing is pleasurable for the reader. They want to know some things – just as you want to know the rules before you start playing a board game – but they also want intrigue and nuance, so their curiosity is aroused and they can start trying to work things out for themselves. You have to have on the one hand, absolute clarity, and on the other, obfuscation, and the two hands have to be clasped, fingers intertwined, so that the text is both strongly rooted and yet open to interpretation.
Over ten years of writing and writing groups, I’m getting better at spotting in my own work which bits need clarity, or telling, and which don’t. I love checking out first chapters to see how authors find a balance between the two, and I like experimenting with telling to see what works.
I’ll leave you with an opening line which makes me feel grounded and safe, and yet curious. We’re given the location, the season and the time of day – and a springboard into the story.
‘It was an ordinary spring day in Istanbul, a long and leaden afternoon like so many others, when she discovered, with a hollowness in her stomach, that she was capable of killing someone.’ Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve
Emma Rea is an author, reviewer and proof reader. She is the author of MG novels Top Dog (Gomer 2014) which was shortlisted for the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Award and My Name is River, published this June by Firefly Press, and listed as Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week in July.
Emma ReaMy Name is River is available online through Waterstones or Amazon, and can be ordered through any bookshop, or through the Firefly Press website.
Cath Barton 