Getting shorter

Everyone says you get shorter as you get older and I've discovered it to be true. I turned 40 and suddenly I'm writing short stories that really are short stories. For ages I just couldn't master this form and, although I could write flash fictions, every time the word count got above 400 or so everything started seeming like the beginning of something bigger.

But now I've completed a short story, Probation, for my OU Creative Writing module and got my highest marks ever. The feedback I got from the tutor was excellent and she said it just needed a bit of work and it would then be of a publishable standard. So I polished it, and then I polished it again, and then I submitted it to the Yeovil Literary Prize. I doubt it will get anywhere but the sense of achievement in doing it is more than enough for me.

I've been so inspired by my new found ability to write short stories that I'm working on another to submit for the Stories for Homes anthology that Sally Swingewood is putting together to raise money for the homeless charity, Shelter. I have 10 days left to polish it and I reckon it's going to end up at around 2000 words (the word limit is 3000 so I really am doing well!). And I know what I want to fit in the 1200 or so I have left to fill, and I think I know how to use them sparingly to just say what I need to say and not leave the reader with lots of unanswered questions that need a novel to answer them. I think I know this. The proof will be in the end result, so we'll see.

So how come I can suddenly do it? Well, it's not so sudden really. Although I have always read them it used to be fairly infrequently but I have spent the past 9 months or so reading lots and lots of short stories by very different writers. The ones that really stood out for me were Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, William Trevor and Anita Desai. I'm currently reading Stuart Nadler's The Book of Life, it's great, and I have Alison Moore's The Pre-War House next on the TBR pile. And I also read the brilliant book from Vanessa Gebbie - Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story. 

But I think what helped me the most in my quest to master this form was the advice I received from author and creative writing teacher, Shaun Levin, to just 'stick with a moment in time' and the critiquing at every stage of Probation's creation from my writing partner, Jen Squire. A huge thank you to them both for helping me do this. And then there's the Retreat West short story competition that I launched at the beginning of the year. Reading all the entries and choosing the shortlists has made me think much harder and deeper about what makes a short story work, and what doesn't. So my thanks also go to everyone that has entered so far - you've all helped to make me a better short story writer. 

What short story writers do you enjoy and recommend I read next?

Lighthouses, Rooks and Wedding Cake Trees

Even though I should still be posting up my character blogs for the A-Z challenge, I'm afraid it is over for me. As much as I was enjoying writing them, I got distracted by arranging writing retreats for my new venture, Retreat West, which I started late last year after moving to Exmoor.

The one-day writing retreats in Exeter are how it all began, then came the short story competition, now there are workshops and residential retreats/writing holidays planned. The last two weeks have been consumed with planning a series of three Walk & Write events. These will offer retreat space and time for writers to immerse themselves in their writing with no distractions but will also feature workshops on using landscape and setting in fiction, and walking tours with more writing exercises. Although I suppose the name might have given that away already!

I'm very excited to have some great authors lined up for these events. The first is going to be held in October this year in a lighthouse cottage on the cliffs not far from where I live and will have, Alison Moore, whose debut novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Booker prize last year, doing a half day workshop about place in fiction. The guided tour will be by local author, Melanie Hudson, who has the Exmoor landscape as a big part of her debut novel, The Wedding Cake Tree.


The second one will be in March 2014 in a beach house on West Wittering beach in Sussex, which is the setting for Jane Rusbridge's novels, The Devil's Music and Rook. She will be doing a workshop and a walking tour of the beach and village that inspired her work.

Event three is still in very early planning stages but will be in London and look at using urban landscapes in fiction.

Hopefully these will just be the start of an ongoing series of Walk & Write events, and there will also be Just Write retreats and Cook & Write retreats with workshops on using food in fiction. Where would you like to see them happen and what authors would make these events exciting for you?

S is for Stella

Oops, I missed a few days. Life got in the way of my Q and R posts and today I'm back with a guest post for S. My guest is Jenny Squire (picture here), who also made an appearance here in last year's A-Z. 

You can find Jen's brand new blog here, where she's going to be writing about writing, reading and music. Jen and I have been writing together for a few years now and even though I'm not allowed to say the 'N' word in her presence, I do believe she may actually be writing one! 

So my thanks go to Jen for today's post and for being my writing partner.


I remember reading My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin, keen to understand more about
the author who established the most prestigious literary award in Australia. As with most
awards, many of the recipients have gone on to have strong careers, and some of the
decisions have been the subject of controversy and great debate. 

Until recently, a little too recently I must confess, I thought that Miles Franklin was a man.

Stella Maria Miles Franklin (1879 – 1954) was an Australian writer and feminist, and she was passionate about the survival of writers, literary magazines and writers’ organisations in Australia.

She wrote her famous novel, My Brilliant Career, as Miles Franklin, not wanting readers to
assume it was written by a woman. She was 21 years old in a time when women’s writing
wouldn’t be critiqued without bias. The novel went on to become an international success, and today is still regarded as an Australian classic.

Stella was a ‘real character’ who mixed with the Australian literary circle, worked in
women’s movements and progressive causes in Chicago and London, nursed Allied soldiers in the Balkans, and returned to Australia in the 1930s. She continued to write throughout, apparently often submitting work under pseudonyms, which were kept well hidden.

In the 1930s she returned to Australia, and continuing her passion for the development of
Australian literature, left terms in her will to establish the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Recently a new award, the Stella Prize, was established by a collection of donors and
supporters to celebrate women’s contribution to Australian literature. Also worth $50,000,
the inaugural prize has just been awarded to Carrie Tiffany for Mateship with Birds.

Rather than perpetuate the current and lively debate on women’s awards and whether they legitimately have a place in the literary world, I think it’s worth celebrating the legacy of Stella Maria Miles Franklin, her dedication and her impact on many writers’ success. And if you listen to Carrie Tiffany’s acceptance speech I hope you’ll agree.

P is for Pagan

Cover of Lace

I first read Shirley Conran's Lace when I was a teenage girl and probably too young to do so. I found it exotic and exciting and because I knew I probably shouldn't have been reading it, I felt daring and naughty and oh so grown up. I longed to lead the kind of life portrayed in the book instead of the humdrum one I had going on in small-town England, and as Pagan was the English girl I found myself casting myself in her role, although of all the main characters she was probably the one who was the least in charge of her own destiny.

Often dismissed by the literary world as just raunchy chick-lit, I recently re-read Lace to see what I thought of it now that I'm (apparently) a grown-up. And I'd have to say that although it's definitely raunchy, it's too dark for chick-lit and it actually addresses a lot of the harrowing elements of life: abortion, adoption, rape, the sex industry and adultery, to name a few. And the girl doesn't always get the boy in the end either.

But what I ultimately took away from it is that it's a story about friendship, and love, and loyalty. And it's also a story about women making their own way in the world. Pagan comes from an old aristocratic family whose way of life is disappearing. She's been bred to be a wife and not much more and after finishing school, where all of the main characters meet at the start of the story, she drifts into marriage with the wrong man and is a bored society wife living the ex-pat life in Egypt. I chose her out of all of the characters in the book as for me she was the most real, the most loyal of all the friends, and the one that needed looking out for the most. 

Even though it was 25 years between readings, the story drew me in just as much the second time around, although this time I could recognise that its real message appeared to be that women deserved to have orgasms!