the new writer issue 114

Writing together, writing alone

Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus

The New Writer annual competitionWriters’ prompts

THE MAGAZINE FOR WRITERS AND WRITING GROUPS

THENEWWRITER.COM

OVER 20NEW POEMSEVERY ISSUE

THE NEW WRITER COMPETITIONANNOUNCED

REBECCA SMITHKATIE FFORDE RACHEL CONNOR

‘If you want to read about love and m

arriage, you have to buy two separate books.’ A

lan King

April/M

ay/June 2013 | Issue 114

Established in 2009, Choc Lit is an independent publisher, specialising in quality women’s fi ction with romantic content, where the writing clearly develops the hero’s point of view.

Not surprisingly, they believe that the enjoyment of a good read is enhanced by the taste of chocolate!

Winning Publisher of the Year in 2012 Choc Lit has also won several awards for individual books including Please Don’t Stop the Music by Jane Lovering (2012 Romantic Novel of the Year Award), Highland Storms by Christina Courtenay (2012 Historical Novel of the Year Award) and Love & Freedom by Sue Moorcroft (2012 Best Romantic Read Award).

The New Writer / Choc Lit competition

We are delighted to partner with Choc Lit on this competition. Their secret? A Tasting Panel of independent readers who fi nd the best romantic fi ction. However, they themselves strongly recommend that you have your novel assessed before submitting it – which is where The New Writer comes in.

The New Writer will act as agent for 3 submissions to receive preferential access to their Tasting Panel. At this stage we are simply looking for your fi rst chapter and synopsis before you embark on the full novel.

To enter go to thenewwriter.com / COMPETITIONS / CHOC LIT

For full terms and conditions see thenewwriter.com

All entries must be received no later than midnight on 31 July 2013.

Where heroes are like chocolate – irresistible!

fi nd the best romantic fi ction.

for 3 submissions to receive

full novel.

f rom t h e edi t orsTaking off the training wheels

thenewwriter.com 3

Do you remember that feeling when you were learning to ride a bike? ‘Don’t let go!’ you would shout to whoever it was helping you to launch yourself, while at the same time you really wanted them to do just that. Eventually they did

let go and you were riding independently, and it felt great (well at least until you reached the end of the road and realized you didn’t know how to turn the bike… and so fell off). That’s a bit how it has felt with our first issue of The New Writer. In the background we have had Guy and Merric willing us on while we have been saying, ‘Let go! Don’t let go! Let go!’

We (Alison and Madelaine) first met when we started working for newbooks magazine five years ago. We quickly realized that we had in common not only a love of books and reading but also that in our spare time (what spare time?) we both wrote. We started by sharing our work with each other, rather sheepishly at first, and then joined a writing group which we have ended up running. We have challenged, even nagged, each other to get on with our writing. On one very scary occasion we even made each other read at a poetry slam!

When the opportunity came for The New Writer to join the newbooks stable we were both champing at the bit to take it on, though neither of us said anything and eventually it was Merric who put forward the suggestion that we become joint editors.

So here it is, our brand new relaunch issue. When we agreed to become Editors, little did we know the challenge ahead. It has been a steep learning curve, to say the least, but what a journey we’ve had. We know we haven’t managed to get it all right first time, and no doubt over the coming issues you will see various tweaks and changes. As much as anything it is your magazine and we aim to provide the content that you want to read.

A survey of existing subscribers revealed that more than half of you belong to writing groups, often more than one, so we were keen to include more content for writing groups. Do go and look at Writing Together, Writing Alone and share it with your writing group. We’d love to hear of exercises that have produced some good work for your group, so do get in touch.

Readers asked for insights into the publishing world and in this issue we have profiles of an editor, an agent and an article about publisher Head of Zeus. We plan to have similar articles in future issues so do let us know which areas of publishing you’d like to see into.

Competitions: love them or hate them, they can be a good impetus to get writing and to put your writing out there. We plan not only to continue the popular Annual New Writer Competition but also to introduce a variety of other competitions. For starters, in this issue you’ll find a Cover Photography challenge and a competition we have arranged with romantic fiction publisher Choc Lit.

Alongside all this new content we are keen to maintain the presence of work by our subscribers, both fiction and poetry. Please do submit your best work for our consideration. All opportunities to get out your laptop are highlighted throughout the magazine with this symbol:

So, what do you think? We’d like to hear from you, our readers. Feedback is always welcome, but do be gentle, this is our first issue! Turn those laptops on, get those computers logged in, get writing and email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Alison – [email protected] Madelaine – [email protected]

f r o m t h e e d i t o r s

Taking off the training wheels

con t en t

4 twitter.com/thenewwritermag|facebook.com/TheNewWriterMagazine

Regulars

PublisherGuy Pringle

EditorsAlison GlinnMadelaine Smith

Guest Poetry EditorAbegail Morley

DesignPark Corner Design Ltd

Editorial ConsultantMerric Davidson

The New Writer 4 Froxfi eld Close Winchester SO22 6JWTelephone 01962 620320

All raw materials used in the production of this magazine are harvested from sustainable managed forests.

Every effort has been made to trace ownership of copyright material, but in a few cases this has proved impossible. Should any question arise about the use of any material, do please let us know.


Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM






lan King

April/M

ay/June 2013 | Issue 114

writing prompt from The Character Map

writing prompt from City of Inspiration Writing Map

writing prompt from Café Writing Map writing prompt from My Writing Life Writing Map

writing prompt from Writing Things Writing Map

writing prompt from Write Around the House Writing Map

Writing Maps are a portable and inspiring guide through the wonders and perils of writing fiction and memoir. Each illustrated map is an A3 poster that folds down to postcard size, and contains 12 thought-provoking writing exercises to make sure you have writerly fun wherever you are and in ways that will surprise you.

www.writingmaps.com

WRITING MAPS:WRITING PROMPTS IN YOUR POCKET

SEE p64TO ORDER

£4 EACH

PORTABLE PRACTICAL INSPIRING NO MORE WRITER’S BLOCK

M E E T T H E AGE N T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42MaggiePhillipsofEdVictorAgency

W R I T I NG SPAC E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4RebeccaSmithsharesherhalf-constructedsummerhouse

W R I T E R S’ B O OK SH E L F . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6Aroundupofwritingbookreviews

W R I T E R S’ GROU P T H E R A P Y . . . . . . 57SimonWhaley–IsElitismFair?

R E A DE R S’ C H A L L E NGE . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Subscribersresponseandanewchallenge

M E E T T H E P U BL ISH E R . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59HeadofZeus

SU B SC R I P T IONS A N D SP EC I A L OF F E R S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

F I V E B O OK S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66KatieFfordetellsusaboutthebooksthatshapedherasawriter

p oe t ry i n fo c usA collage of words

thenewwriter.com 31

So in 1996 Zinnermann-Hope began her research and writing. The search for a family history and search for self-identity is what drove her on to write: “I have no brothers, sisters, cousins, no-one else to share the loss of ‘home’ with.”

Gathering the material together was a huge task, especially as it was essential that Zinnemann-Hope found not only her voice, but those of her characters. “It was a process of accumulation. Structuring it was the most diffi cult. It was workshopped at RADA with some fi ne actors, and this helped to pinpoint the gaps and pull the structure around. Workshopping with other poets also helped that process. Ultimately it had to fulfi l its dramatic imperative.”

At her launch at the Poetry Cafe, she read alongside actors, Anthony Shuster (War Horse) and Deborah Finlay (Cranford) – bringing the book alive. Adele Ward said, “Hearing Anthony Shuster reading the voices of the German men, alternating with the various women's voices read by Pam and Deborah Findlay, really made me realise how she had changed the voices for the characters and caught them so well.”

“I get a number of submissions about the Holocaust, but there is something different about this story,” says Adele Ward. “A woman who is the daughter of a Nazi is determined to marry the Jewish man she falls in love with, even though that means being disowned by her family, risking being caught, as her father puts in a personal phone call to Göring to close the borders, and putting up with prison under Stalin's purges in Russia and then incarceration on the Isle of Man when they fi nally get to England. We would all want to fi nd love like that, so it adds something positive to such an emotional depiction of an important part of history.”

Every Night In Her Sleep (My mother’s dream)

It draws me down.Deep under turquoisethe water is lapping me.

It keeps retreating.

I can feel the yellinglodged in my chest.I open my mouth:

no sound comes out.

I try to push it out.I get no breath.

And it keeps coming back.

Day after day I graspat straws of sunlight; I’mbeached on hot dry sand.

Night after night I swimand stand in this stifl ing sea.

I want to breathe.

I can feel the silkinessof the water.I can open my mouth.

I want to yell.

My face is bursting,held in by the water,the power of the water.

And it keeps returning.

On Cigarette Papers hooks you immediately and is almost impossible to put down. I read it in one sitting and was blown away by it. I needed to reread it several times to take in the enormity of the project and the beauty of the individual poems. I agree with Zinnemann-Hope when she says, “It’s an extraordinary story, a cracking good story to tell and it takes in much of the turmoil of 20th century in Europe. It demanded to be told.”

When a poet uses found poetry, they should set their own constraints by analysing the material, selecting creatively and retelling something that needs to be told. It is up to the poet to decide whether or not to use only found material, with no words of their own – or to include just a few snippets from another source.

Writing found poetry can help a poet in a number of ways. It can act as a trigger – a playful way of releasing our creativity; join words together that we weren’t expecting and give a different slant to our writing, often taking us somewhere new. By responding to various genres we develop our interpretive skills; use language that might be alien to us and make something ordinary, poetic. Our editorial skills gain importance – we need to craft our piece; shape our lines; tighten the structure. It is not just collecting words; it is collecting the right words for our purpose.

So select your scissors and get snipping.

A collage of words

their own – or to include just a few snippets from

ways. It can act as a trigger – a playful way of releasing

various genres we develop our interpretive skills; use language that might be alien to us and make

lines; tighten the structure. It is not just collecting words; it is collecting the right words for our purpose.


30 twitter.com/thenewwritermag | facebook.com/TheNewWriterMagazine

Found poetry is all about taking text from one source, perhaps an un-poetic one, such as a newspaper, instruction manual, or recipe, or a literary source such as a novel, and using

them to create a poem. At one end of the spectrum the poet keeps all the words and the order, but adds their own line breaks, or they might add additional words and change the order. At the other end, the poet might harvest material which they quote within their own poems.

Noted and quoted famous poets took text from other sources and put them into their poems: Ezra Pound used official documents in parts of The Cantos, and Eliot included material from Shakespearean theatre and Greek mythology in The Waste Land. Evelyn Waugh took the title for his 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust straight from The Waste Land:

“And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Chinua Achebe did the same, taking the title for his novel, Things Fall Apart from Yeats’s The Second Coming.

To create a whole collection based on found poetry is hugely challenging and time-consuming, but Pam Zinnemann-Hope masters the concept in her collection, On Cigarette Papers (Ward Wood Publishing, 2012). To find out how this book came about, I contacted Pam and her publisher Adele Ward.

“When my mother [Lottie] died in 1990, two years after my father [Kurt], I found an archive of letters, photos and objects that she had left me”, says Zinnemann-Hope.“Amongst them was a tiny pile of cigarette papers with writing in Russian, pencilled in her hand.”

The book begins with a foreword and dramatis personae. A chronology of events is included at the back of the book, as well as a list of her sources.

A collage of wordsP o e t r y i n f o c u s

And I’m Clearing Up the House…

Now you’re gone, mother,I wear your pink angora cardigan.I like its softness against my neck and wrists,your smell of cigarettes and Joy de Patou.

I find it edgy in the house without you.You’ve put everything in order for me,even tied the right key to each suitcasein the attic. You would!

–

You know that Russian proverb?It’s in Solzhenitsyn:‘No. Don’t! Don’t dig up the past.Dwell on the past and you lose an eye.’

It goes on:‘Forget the pastand you’ll lose two eyes.

Up until this point she had only known the bare bones of her family’s history, but with help from three of her mother’s friends, Erna, Tilde Goldschmidt/Goldsmith and Elizabeth May, she began putting the pieces back together. Erna was a German Communist who ended up in the UK. Zinnermann-Hope’s parents met her in Russia and her story is told in one of the poems:

Kharkov, August 1937Erna’s Tale

How come my husband is arrestedfor ‘crimes against the state’?

I need to find comfort.I want to see my friends.I set off for Kurt and Lottie’s in the heat.

Their landlady doesn’t speak,she points at their boarded up door.

B y A B e G A i L M o r L e y

W H AT ’S N E W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Aroundupofwritingnewsandinformation

W R I T E R S’ P ROM P T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Yourchancetorespondtoavisualprompt

I N T R AY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5SuzanneRuthven–Trialsandtribulationsofacommissioningeditor

F ROM T H E HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16RachelConnoreavesdropsonthewriters’ball

M E E T T H E E DI T OR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18KrystynaGreenofConstableRobinson

P OE T RY I N FO C US . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30AbegailMorleylooksatCutUpPoetry

W R I T I NG T O GE T H E R , W R I T I NG A L ON E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0Anexampleofawritingexerciseandyourchancetotry

w r i t i ng spac esRebecca Smith

thenewwriter.com 45

I always carry writing materials with me; I have learnt that this is necessary. I can remember fitting a whole scene onto a supermarket receipt when suddenly I had a few precious minutes but no other paper. It is probably because I am spectacularly lazy that I don’t much like writing at a desk. I would far rather write sitting on a sofa, or in a café, or on a train or lounging on a bed. The liminal place between sleeping and being fully awake is often where composition begins. I tell my students this. The university timetablers often give my creative writing seminars 9 o’clock starts. The students aren’t that pleased, but I think it can be useful. My students won’t be aware (or probably interested) that their tutor has been up since six. Their tutor should have been writing at that early hour, but has probably just been answering emails, vacuuming, seeing her children off to school and college, or marking assignments.

Getting up and writing straight away is the secret of getting things done. I love my university work, but marking over eight hundred thousand words of creative writing each year does take its toll. My own writing gets pushed out during term-time and I sometimes feel as though my characters are lost in the woods or trapped wherever I have left them, poor things, sitting about clutching cold cups of tea. It’s impossible to write a complete novel in a university vacation, so I have to find ways of writing all year round.

My editor at Ivy Press for Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life’s Dilemmas was a hard taskmistress. The moment I’d sent her something it would come flying back with requests that I cut thirty seven words, add further footnotes or solve the problem of an orphanB. I wrote the last parts of it sitting on the floor in my son’s room, working while he slept. He had what we now think was whooping cough, and was off school for weeks. I had to write when I wasn’t looking after him, or teaching or marking. My partner took time off work and my mum helped too. Whooping cough is so violent that sufferers often throw up. This isn’t how it should be in the Sissinghurst writing tower of my imagining.

I sent off the final chunk of copy for my Jane book exactly a year after I’d first been to visit the Ivy Press offices in Lewes. I am a non-driver and had travelled by train along the coast from Southampton, changing at Brighton. Days out like this are a treat. My life is very samey (home, family, work, school concerts and meetings, and not as many cultural events as I’d like) but this suits me. I half dread our summer holidays and almost punched the air when I read that Anne Tyler dreaded hers too. What writers often need is stability, for nothing to be happening. I have to fit writing around other things, but if the other things are Just Normal Things, it is so much easier.

Perhaps the reason that I don’t really have a functioning desk is because the whole house is a giant desk to me. I like writing on the sofa when there’s nobody in, or in our so-called dining room where the growing piles of books mean that the walls are moving inwards like those garbage-crushing walls in

Star Wars. When it’s not too cold I can work in our attic bedroom. We live on a hill and I like to think that I can see as far as Chawton, but I’m probably deceiving myself. I have a small office at the university. It was constructed by boxing off part of a corridor. One wall is a huge window that looks out over the tennis courts, I even have a little terrace; however I’m usually so busy seeing students that I can’t spend time writing there.

An Ikea Alve corner workstation was meant to change my life, to make me more efficient and productive. It’s a big pine cupboard with doors that open to reveal, in theory, a beautifully organized space with a pull-out surface for a laptop. There is enough room for a printer, convenient holes for cables, and lovely deep shelves for books and files. The books are triple-parked now, but somehow it has never made the transition from big pine cupboard to perfect desk. It’s useful for storing work-related stuff and for hiding the clutter of family life, but who wants to stare into a cupboard when they are writing? I need a window.

Last year we bought a summerhouse. The idea is that it will be that longed for retreat, that peaceful place to read and write. My sons are already talking about dartboards, punch bags and snooker tables, but I will stand firm. Only those things that are beautiful and useful will be allowed in the summerhouse, and that doesn’t include sports equipment. For months the summerhouse remained as a flat-packed behemoth, taking up most of the garage. There just wasn’t a free weekend when it wasn’t raining, snowing or blowing a gale. The summerhouse is now half-built; it has been in this state for weeks. We are waiting for another weekend without a storm. It doesn’t have a roof yet, and doors and windows are a distant dream. I know I’m lucky to be somebody who has a garden where she will one day have an idyllic retreat, but in the meantime, it’s just business as usual. I will keep on writing, finding the spaces between everything else, while trying to maintain the Sissinghurst tower in my mind, the place that a writer must be able to reach if she is ever to get anything done.

B A lone word on a line at the end of a paragraph is called an orphan.

Rebecca Smith’s first three novels, The Bluebird Café, Happy Birthday and All That, and A Bit of Earth are published by Bloomsbury. During 2009 and 2010 she was the writer-in-residence at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. Her first work of non-fiction, Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life’s Dilemmas, is published by Ivy Press in the UK and Tarcher Penguin in North America. She teaches creative writing at the University of Southampton.


4 4 twitter.com/thenewwritermag | facebook.com/TheNewWriterMagazine

B Y R E B E C C A S M I T H A writer is meant to have a beautiful retreat. Dylan Thomas had a boathouse, Roald Dahl, an elaborate shed, and Vita Sackville-West had an Elizabethan tower

at Sissinghurst Castle. Somewhere along the way I forgot to acquire a cabin or an eyrie of my own. I have completed four and three-quarter novels and a non-fi ction book but still don’t have a proper desk.

Although mine isn’t a huge oeuvre, people do sometimes ask me how I manage. I have an almost full-time job and three children, but have never believed that the pram in the hall is the enemy of creativity. My fi rst baby’s arrival spurred me on to fi nish the novel that had been fl opping around in my notebooks for years. When your time is rationed, you learn the discipline that a writer needs.

A writer has to create space for herself - the space to think and read and to make false starts. I’ve learnt how to do that, to construct my writing space wherever I am. I’m good at writing bits of things and at picking up where I left off.

A half-constructed summerhouse

W R I T I N G S PA C E S

© H

. G. Sm

ith

m ee t t h e edi t orKrystyna Green


Krystyna GreenM E E T T H E E D I T O R

Krystyna Green Editorial Director for CR Crime talks to us about her career and how her role at Constable & Robinson has morphed and expanded over the years.

Krystyna Green

I’ve been editorial director of the Constable & Robinson crime list for fi fteen years now but in fact it’s been going for as long as I have – both of us started out in 1964! So we both have a big

birthday coming up and to celebrate fi fty years of Constable Crime we’re rebranding the crime list in 2013, one year early, but we couldn’t wait to give it its own dedicated imprint.

Since I’ve been doing the job for so long, I’ve come to realise that the qualities of a good commissioning editor are probably also those that a good midwife possesses – patience (masses of that) prior to the book’s delivery, calmness under pressure, encouragement when your author feels like giving up and, above all, enthusiasm and joy when the book is fi nally published.

It takes years to hone these skills – especially the patience. But you have to be intuitive too and truly believe in your author and their work when they come to you; half-heartedness in this business is a fast track to failure.

I started out in publishing twenty-fi ve years ago, working for a literary agent before deciding I wanted to spend time on the other side of the publishing fence. I worked for Times Books at the time of their merger with Collins, followed by Macdonald Futura. After that I freelanced for a while, which is possibly the closest I have come to understanding what it is to be a full-time writer. It can be incredibly isolating – meetings at least twice a week are a necessity to keep you in the loop and to keep you sane, as the alternatives – wandering around in your dressing

gown until 4pm and eating spag bol for breakfast just because it’s there and you can – is not to be recommended in the long term!

I ended up at C&R, or rather at Robinson Publishing, in 1997 and have been here ever since. During that time the list has morphed and expanded beyond recognition. When I took over the running of the crime list we were publishing twenty-two hardbacks a year, primarily for the libraries. There were very few trade sales and certainly no supermarket or non-traditional sales deals. Indeed, there was no paperback publishing arm and paperback rights to Constable’s most notable crime authors – Peter Robinson and R D Wingfi eld – were sold out of house.

Today’s crime list is a very different beast; we publish about sixty-fi ve titles a year in a variety of formats. We do outstandingly well with series crime and have found our own niche in the marketplace with ‘cosy’ crime, spearheaded by our star author M. C. Beaton, who writes the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series.

In the past few years the sales structure has expanded to cover a broad range of outlets and e-readers have had a huge impact on the list. Over the past couple of years I’ve seen particular authors become outstanding e-sellers, notably James Craig and Alison Bruce, homegrown talent

con t en t s

thenewwriter.com 5

FeaturesPA I D T O BE F R I VOL OUS . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2LynneHackles

W H AT W R I T E R S’ BL O C K? . . . . . . . . .20JudyBartkowiak

SP R E A DI NG T H E WOR D W I T H A BL O G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22EmilyBenet

FOL L OW I NG YOU R OB SE S SIONS . 60VanessaGebbie

short st orySomething Not Quite Right by Lynne Woodward

thenewwriter.com 25

SOMETHING NOT QUITE RIGHT

Anna was on her knees in the snow at the foot of a tree, her head bent over, face hidden. Rita sat with her back pressing against the bark, legs stretched in front of

her, staring ahead. The last light of the short day had fi nally slipped away. They had been silent for about ten minutes, and lost for about six hours.

One way, and then another, they had paced along possible paths in the forest, drifting snow following them at each wrong turn. Anna had fi nally sunk into the snow and refused to walk any further.

Rita looked at Anna’s crouched fi gure. ‘I don’t know how you think this is going to

help,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘just sitting here, doing nothing.’

Anna didn’t move. ‘I’m tired. We don’t know where to go. It’s pointless.’

‘I’m so cold,’ said Rita. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to keep walking? At least we’d keep warm.’ She stood up.

‘Come on, Anna.’Anna still didn’t move. Rita got hold of her arm and

began to pull.‘Get the hell off me! What are you doing?’‘We have to walk. Come on.’ Rita pulled again on

Anna’s arm. Anna lashed out at her mother with her other arm, fi ghting her off. Rita let go and turned her back on her. Anna shifted her legs to one side and leaned back against the tree, her arms clutching her knees.

S H O R T S T O R Y

B Y LY N N E W O O D WA R D

What we are looking for is bold, incisive material in any genre just as long as it reflects writing today. First, second and third prizes will be presented as

well as publication for the winning writers in The New Writer annual Collection.

This is the 14th year of The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes, although it is the 17th consecutive year of the Poetry Prizes – previous winners include Alison Moore, Lezanne Clannachan, Sharon Black, Wes Lee, Alexandra Fox, Cathy Whitfield, Alesha Racine, David Grubb, Katy Darby and Graham Clifford, whose award winning entries appeared in our Collections.

Prizes are awarded in the following categories:

FictionShort Stories: 500 to 3,000 wordsMicro Fiction: up to 500 words

Short Stories: 1st prize £300, 2nd £200, 3rd £100Micro Fiction: 1st prize £150, 2nd £100, 3rd £50

Fiction can be on any subject or theme, in any genre (not children’s). Previously published work or work which has previously won a competition is not eligible.

PoetrySingle Poems: up to 40 linesCollections: between 6 – 10 poems, up to 60 lines per poem

Single: 1st prize £100, 2nd £75, 3rd £50Collection: 1st prize £300, 2nd £200, 3rd £100

Single poem entries must be previously unpublished; previously published poems can be included as part of a Collection though the full collection should not have been published previously.

How t o E n t E r t H E n E w w r i t E r A n n uA l P ro sE A n d P oE t ry P r i z E sWe would prefer to receive all entries by email. Entries should be emailed to [email protected] All entries should have the subject heading: ‘Entry – The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes.’ Entries should be sent as an attachment – either Microsoft Word (.doc) or plain text (.txt) formats.

Payment should be made via the Entry page on www.thenewwriter.com. We will match up the entries and the payments when received.

Fiction should be double-spaced, poetry should be single-spaced. Entrants may make as many submissions as they wish but author’s name must not be included on the script. Your name, address, title of entry, word count and category should appear on a separate cover sheet with every entry. Preliminary judging will be carried out by The New Writer editorial board with guest judges making the final selection so there should be no identifying marks – apart from the title – on the entries. Entries are non-returnable.

These are annual prizes – for more information contact The New Writer tel 01962 620320 or email [email protected]

The closing date of The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes is 30th November 2013.

The results of The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes are announced on www.thenewwriter.com towards mid-March and in the Summer edition of the magazine.

The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry PrizesOne of the major, international prizes for contemporary fiction and poetry, this is an opportunity to bring your work to a wider audience.

t h e n e w w r i t er a n n ua l pro se a n d p oe t ry pr i z es


j u dy b a rt kow i a kWhat writers’ block?


What writers’ block?Children’s author and self-help writer Judy Bartkowiak explains how the tools and techniques of Neuro Linguistic Programming can help you get your book published.

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is the study of the structure of excellence, which basically means that if someone can do a thing, then you can do it. All

you need to do is discover the structure of your own excellence. How do you do this as a writer? Focus on when you’re writing at your best, when the words and ideas are fl owing fast and furious, when you read a sentence you’ve written and think, ‘Wow, I’m good.’ What’s the structure? What is the difference that makes the difference? There will be elements of behaviour (programming) and self-talk (linguistic) but most importantly there will be your beliefs (neuro). Here are some tips that will help you discover your own structure of excellence.

1If you can’t imagine it, it ain’t gonna happenExercise those visualising skills and focus your attention on creating an image of your book on sale in a bookshop, on Amazon, seeing people reading it on the train, whatever works for you. This is your book, your visualisation, your compelling outcome.

2How much do you want it… really?To work as a compelling vision it has to be something you want. There can be a down-side to putting yourself out there. Maybe no-one will buy your book? Maybe you’ll get some bad reviews? Perhaps you will have to write another one? Face the consequences of achieving your goal and decide to take the risk.

3You already have all the resources.Lots of writers I know spend more time arranging their space, getting the household chores done, checking Facebook than they spend writing. The environment has to be ‘just so’. This is madness. Instead of ‘trying’ to write 1,000 words a day, just get on with it and do it. Remember the occasions when you were determined to do something and did it? Somewhere in your life you have the skill to focus and be ‘bloody-minded’ about doing what you want to do, so get that skill out from the cobwebs, dust it off and get on with writing.

short st oryTape by Richard Hulse


Show your paintings,’ Kelso had suggested. ‘Some of them are fine.’

The end of term art exhibition. Myra faced it without hope. Failure was gathering

itself in the near future; already she could see its moronic smile.

Myra stood in the large hall the college had designated as exhibition space. Her own allocation was a corner of blank walls and a bare floor. She’d brought several canvases and propped them up against a nearby table, but for a second she contemplated leaving the space as it was. ‘The theme is emptiness,’ she would say. Or impotence. The tutors might even admire her effrontery.

‘They’re pretty good, your paintings,’ Kelso had said. ‘Put them up.’ Easy for him to advise. His own exercises in neo-Rackham pen and inks were beautiful creations; minutely detailed, works of love. ‘It must have taken you hours,’ Myra had said when she’d first seen them in the autumn. He’d smiled.

Gazing about the hall, Myra saw not only Kelso’s work, but the fruits of all the other students’ creativity: Jenny, not long out of sixth form, but gifted beyond her years; everyone knew her portraits of the

S H O R T S T O R Y

poor and dispossessed would be a certain passport to University, here in Manchester or further afield. Then there was William, the retired bus conductor, and his smoky swirling pastels.

It was enough to break one’s heart.True, over the last year, she’d gained competence

in drawing, knew how to block out an image, draw a likeness. But this dogged perseverance served only to underline a fundamental truth; she was talentless. All she could hope for was to put up some of her best – and the word felt heavy with irony, were there such divisions as best and worst when it came to mediocrity? – some, then, of her less inept watercolours, and hope to scrape through the assessments.

Myra grimaced. She’d done well to be accepted on the course. An impact greater than that was too much to hope for. She’d overheard Jenny discussing her work with another student, and from the girl’s pretty lips had fallen the dread words; ‘Sunday afternoon painter.’

But it was all of a oneness. Her flat was less a living space, more a mausoleum for the Arts: clumsy sculptures; aborted novels; poems tucked away in drawers, with rhyme schemes that even Myra

B Y R i c H a R d H u l S e

cov er pho t o gr a ph y com pe t i t ion

thenewwriter.com 29

We are launching a competition to fi nd cover images of future issues of The New Writer.

The judges will be looking for originality as well as visually stunning images that refl ect the spirit and content of The New Writer. We would like you to be as inventive as possible. The winning images will be printed as covers of future issues of The New Writer or may be used to illustrate articles and stories within the magazine.

FORMATThe New Writer format will remain as A4 vertical so we will be looking for portrait images. Text announcing the contents of the magazine will appear over the top of the image and the magazine title may be cut out from the image, so bear this in mind when composing your shot. The colours of the photograph may defi ne the colour palette of the issue.

JUDGING PROCESSEntries will be judged by a panel on originality, technical profi ciency and visual impact. The winner will be revealed in Issue 115 when it is published in July.

HOW TO ENTERTo enter, please email a maximum of three high-res images (300 dpi at A4) as separate emails to [email protected] ‘Cover Photography Competition’ in the subject fi eld. All submissions must be your own work. Please include your name, contact details and a brief description of your submission.

COST OF ENTRYUp to 2 photographs (3 for TNW subscribers) £5.00. Payment for entry can be made via the competitions page on www.thenewwriter.com

The deadline is midnight on Saturday 1 June.

C O V E R PHOTOGRAPHY COM PETITI O N

conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




e m i ly ben e tSpreading the word with a blog


When I was 11 years old, I wrote in my diary, ‘I’ve started a new novel today which I’m going to get published.’ I believed that to get a book published

all I had to do was write one. It was a shock to discover this was not the case.

I later learnt that the book had to be brilliant. Not only that but it had to land on an agent’s desk at the exact moment they were savouring a fresh cup of coffee, the sun was shining and they were feeling a profound love towards all humanity. Rejection was inevitable. If you were very lucky you would receive a personal letter, and only then to tell you that your book was rubbish but your font had potential.

Patience is not my greatest virtue. By 24 I was fed up of waiting for someone to pluck my work out of the slush pile and bless it with their approval. All I wanted to do was write and be read. And so I began a blog about the only thing I really knew anything about, which was working in my Mum's eccentric chandelier shop. At fi rst my readership consisted of a few friends and relatives, but gradually my following grew. I took my weekly deadline very seriously and edited as ruthlessly as if it were going to be printed in a national newspaper.

Emily BenetShopGirlDiariesEmily Benet does for chandeliers what Bridget Jones did for publishing

B Y E M I LY B E N E T

the wordwith a blogspreading

Fiction & PoetryM E T EORO GIC A L LY YOU R S . . . . . . . . . 10AshortstorybyKathWhiting

S OM E T H I NG NO T QU I T E R IGH T . . 25AshortstorybyLynneWoodward

P OE T RY SE L EC T ION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

TA P E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 8AshortstorybyRichardHulse

Competitions

C HO C L I T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

T H E N E W W R I T E R P OE T RY & P RO SE P R I z E S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

P HO T O GR A P H Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

GE T W R I T I NG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

What we are looking for is bold, incisive material in any genre just as long as it reflects writing today. First, second and third prizes will be presented as

well as publication for the winning writers in The New Writer annual Collection.

This is the 14th year of The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes, although it is the 17th consecutive year of the Poetry Prizes – previous winners include Alison Moore, Lezanne Clannachan, Sharon Black, Wes Lee, Alexandra Fox, Cathy Whitfield, Alesha Racine, David Grubb, Katy Darby and Graham Clifford, whose award winning entries appeared in our Collections.

Prizes are awarded in the following categories:

FictionShort Stories: 500 to 3,000 wordsMicro Fiction: up to 500 words

Short Stories: 1st prize £300, 2nd £200, 3rd £100Micro Fiction: 1st prize £150, 2nd £100, 3rd £50

Fiction can be on any subject or theme, in any genre (not children’s). Previously published work or work which has previously won a competition is not eligible.

PoetrySingle Poems: up to 40 linesCollections: between 6 – 10 poems, up to 60 lines per poem

Single: 1st prize £100, 2nd £75, 3rd £50Collection: 1st prize £300, 2nd £200, 3rd £100

Single poem entries must be previously unpublished; previously published poems can be included as part of a Collection though the full collection should not have been published previously.

How t o E n t E r t H E n E w w r i t E r A n n uA l P ro sE A n d P oE t ry P r i z E sWe would prefer to receive all entries by email. Entries should be emailed to [email protected] All entries should have the subject heading: ‘Entry – The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes.’ Entries should be sent as an attachment – either Microsoft Word (.doc) or plain text (.txt) formats.

Payment should be made via the Entry page on www.thenewwriter.com. We will match up the entries and the payments when received.

Fiction should be double-spaced, poetry should be single-spaced. Entrants may make as many submissions as they wish but author’s name must not be included on the script. Your name, address, title of entry, word count and category should appear on a separate cover sheet with every entry. Preliminary judging will be carried out by The New Writer editorial board with guest judges making the final selection so there should be no identifying marks – apart from the title – on the entries. Entries are non-returnable.

These are annual prizes – for more information contact The New Writer tel 01962 620320 or email [email protected]

The closing date of The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes is 30th November 2013.

The results of The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry Prizes are announced on www.thenewwriter.com towards mid-March and in the Summer edition of the magazine.

The New Writer Annual Prose and Poetry PrizesOne of the major, international prizes for contemporary fiction and poetry, this is an opportunity to bring your work to a wider audience.

t h e n e w w r i t er a n n ua l pro se a n d p oe t ry pr i z es


w h at ’s n e w ?

thenewwriter.com 7

W H AT ’ SN E W ?

The 2013 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Competition has been launchedThe Festival is on the lookout for today’s best writers from all across UK and beyond, and is encouraging submissions of a poems or series of poems to the competition. The deadline for entry is 14 June.

Poems can be on any subject and previous entrants have written poems inspired by a variety of topics, conjuring images of the wilds of Africa, Italian rain and the blustery shoreline of Britain – evoking strong emotions and recalling experiences or creating new narratives with imaginative and compelling use of language.

Once all poems are submitted, a panel of judges will choose a long list of entries, which will then be included in a published booklet available to entrants and the general public.

The Competition Final will be held on National Poetry Day, Thursday 3 October 2013 – where the shortlisted poems will be performed and the Poet of the Year title decided. The fi nal will combine the poetry readings with live musical entertainment, and is one of the community literature highlights of the year.

More information can be seen at http://bit.ly/CantabPoet

Our regular column of news snippets and insights into the world of writing

Writing Hampshire – Mapping the County through PoetryA map of poems about what Hampshire means to the people who live, work, study, play or visit the county has been created and poets are invited to add their own poems to the map.

Submission is online via the map. The poems are pinpointed to the locations that inspired them and it is possible for readers to comment on each poem.

The map is open to all ages and you don’t need to live in Hampshire to join in. The only requirement is that the poem is connected to a place in Hampshire that matters to you.

The map can be seen at http://bit.ly/HantsPoetry

Ros Barber longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction Poet Ros Barber, whose novel The Marlowe Papers has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, will be appearing at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on Saturday 27 April. Ros is renowned for the entertaining and powerful quality of her live readings, so this is sure to be among the highlights of the festival.

www.cheltenhampoetryfest.co.uk Competition NewsWe have had so much to put into this relaunch issue that there isn’t any space remaining for Competition News. There is however a regularly updated list on the website. Do have a look and while there have a browse around. www.thenewwriter.com

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the most up to date information.

The Arvon Foundation brochure is now available to download from their website. Arvon offers life-changing creative experiences to anyone who writes from beginners to published writers.http://www.arvonfoundation.org/

Readers’ ChallengeWith so much news recently about signifi cant archaeological fi nds the Readers’ Challenge this issue is to write a piece of fl ash fi ction on the theme of ‘Digging up the Past’. Submissions should be no more than 200 words. The best will be published in a future issue of The New Writer. See p58 for results from TNW112.

© D

erek Adams

experiences to anyone who writes from

P O E T R Y I N F O C U SP O E T R Y I N F O C U S

DiggingI carefully trowelthrough your rippling archaeologiestumbling from fl oor to fl ooreasing away the fragments,fi nding the summer levelsstrewn with cornand the bone studded winter surfaces.I even fi nd your footprintleft in a hurryone muddy November afternoon.You live forwards season by seasonblind to me.I dig backwardslayer by layeronly half seeing.We pass each otherin a few days of excavationon a hot summer.

Hugh Greasley

AfterwardsI went back to the spot where we spent an afternoon –the river a gleam in the dark, sky a braille of stars.

We watched a kahn lug coal to Koblenz or Köln, a line of shirts in surrender from bridge to stern.

I lay with my head on your lap while you fed me some apricot fl an – but only if I said sinaasappelsap.

Things I sensed then would return again and again,like a guide light that booms out of the night

then stops, leaving the drizzled tail of its refl ectiondeep in the mind long after the light has gone.

Will Kemp

p oe t ry i n fo c us

Available from the shop at guisegifts.com

Not forgetting Sarah’s notecards!

We love these wonderful Skinny Notebooks from Sarah Hough. At 7*14 cm they are the ideal size for carrying in

your pocket or bag, and are just perfect to note down that snatch of conversation overheard on a bus, or that brilliant line of poetry that popped into your head when you were walking the dog.

You can buy them for £2.00 each and they would make great little envelope fi llers to include in a card to your writer friends.

SARAH HOUGH STATIONERY

£2.00 EACH

SEE PAGE 64 TO ORDER

We love these wonderful Skinny We love these wonderful Skinny Notebooks from Sarah Hough. At 7ideal size for carrying in

You can buy them for £2.00

We love these wonderful Skinny

STATIONERY

We love these wonderful Skinny Notebooks from Sarah Hough.

your pocket or bag, and are just perfect to note

conversation overheard

ideal size for carrying in your pocket or bag, and are just perfect to note down that snatch of conversation overheard on a bus, or that brilliant line of poetry that popped into your head when you were walking the dog.

You can buy them for £2.00

ideal size for carrying in

writer friends.writer friends.writer friends.

Not forgetting Not forgetting Not forgetting

£6.00 EACH



Pool with Two FiguresPaintings by David HockneyIn Californian lightpoised over the rippling surface of the poolhe standsbalanced on a shadowwhich slides overwarm poolside tilesand undulates through the accidental colours of fi ring.Eyes half shut in the glare, he watchesthe body below.A pale phrasein the song of acrylic lightcontained and blindbelow the surfacein the trembling mesh of the sunthat lashes the sides of the pool.

Hugh Greasley

Les EvènementsWe didn't throw paving stones in Montrealthat summer of '68. We sat in dope-fi lled roomswhile Chas droned his way through Cohen,

drank rum and coke, raved to Bob Marleyin La vieille barrique. We cooled our feeton dawn cobbles by Our Lady of the Harbour,

drove with crates of beer to Memphrémagogwhere old men spoke exiled languagesand wives recreated homelands in the kitchen.

We made love on land surrenderedby Abenaki chiefs, counted constellationsspelling out eternity across the lake.

Margaret Beston



…AND 6 MORE TO TEMPT YOU!

Agapanthus Breeze (SKaga) – Actual sizeAllium Fernandez (SKali) Arabian Night (SKara) Sweet Lavender (SKlav) Roses are Red (SKros) Going Dutch (SKtul)

£2.00 EACH


thenewwriter.com 9

short st oryMeteorologically Yours by Kath Whiting


He has tried out every café in town and decided on this one. It is not the prettiest but it has excellent coffee and large windows which let in enough sky. Today

sunshine is streaming in, a relief after weeks of grey. He sits in his corner, opens his laptop and continues his thesis.

‘Good morning,’ the waitress sings. Her hair is haloed in the light.

‘Hello.’‘Coffee and two boiled eggs?’‘Please.’ He hadn’t really noticed her before; she’d

just been in the background.She beams at him. ‘Why not try something

different. Scrambled? Poached?’‘No thanks.’ He returns her smile and manages not

to blush at his monotony.She leans forward, ‘I’ll make sure they’re cooked to

perfection.’ Then she skips to the kitchen.He looks back at his screen. ‘The attraction of

particles...’ He rubs his forehead. The waitress is different today. He tries to remember how she’d been before, civil, slightly sullen. Maybe she wants to increase her tip, maybe it is the sunshine, maybe she is fl irting with him.

She comes back in and sings as she makes his coffee, warms his milk.

‘So, you’re writing the next bestseller?’ He gets a waft of washing lines as she puts his coffee down.

‘No, nothing so exciting. I’m writing about molecular fusion.’

METEOROLOGICALLY YOURS

B Y K AT H W H I T I N G

‘Oh, that’s pretty exciting. I love Boughen’s work.’‘You’ve read Boughen?’ ‘Got to exercise the mind.’‘Wow.’‘Not what you’d expect from a waitress?’ She grins

at him.‘No, I mean, I suppose not.’ As he stumbles over his

snobbery, he spills the milk. ‘Sorry.’She fetches a cloth and wipes up his mess. An old woman in a pink coat comes in. The

waitress hurries over. He steals glances and catches at snippets as she takes the woman’s order. They laugh raucously and discuss knitting and French cinema. He sees he is not special.

When the waitress brings his eggs he wonders why he hadn’t clocked her before. He has eyes, he is a man; has he really been that caught up in molecules?

‘I hope you enjoy them.’‘I always do; they’re excellent. Thank you.’ ‘I’ll tell the chef.’‘The coffee’s great too.’ He wants to compliment her.‘It’s all about roasting the beans. It’s half art, half

science. That’s probably where you dwell, isn’t it?’‘Err, I’d certainly like to.’She sparkles at him and he thinks maybe he is a

bit special.

The next day the air is thick with mist. He sits at his table, and rubs his chin; he has shaved. After a while the waitress comes over to him. Her hair falls over one eye.

S H O R T S T O R Y

short st oryMeteorologically Yours by Kath Whiting

thenewwriter.com 1 1

‘Hello,’ he says.‘Morning.’ No smile. As she waits for his order, her

gaze drifts out the window. ‘Coffee and eggs please.’ He decides to take a risk.

‘Scrambled please.’A raised eyebrow is the only reaction to his

extraordinary request. He opens his laptop and types. Where is his coffee?

He looks over at the counter. She moves dreamily, caressing the coffee machine rather than instructing it. Minutes later she sets his drink down.

‘Thanks,’ he says.‘Hmm? You’re welcome.’ She turns to go.‘Err...’ he begins.She twists back to him. ‘Yes?’He had been about to change his order back

to boiled, but her expression puts him off. ‘Don’t worry.’

He stares, perplexed after her.The door opens and it is the old woman; damp

clinging to her pink coat. She sinks into a seat near his. Long moments pass before the waitress goes to her. She smiles distractedly at the woman, takes her order and swoops her hair back as she saunters to the kitchen.

The old woman looks over at him. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

He cranes towards his laptop, but the woman leans over and whispers, ‘Is she the same person?’

He forgets to be shy. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’

The woman laughs. ‘That’s what I used to think. Either twins or schizophrenia. But I finally worked it out. S.A.D; extreme seasonal adjustment disorder. Her moods match the weather.’

They look out at the swirling mist.‘Gosh.’‘It’s interesting to see how she interprets the

elements. You should have seen her when it snowed; she was marvellous.’

‘Before yesterday, she was...’‘Insipid? Dull?’‘Yes, I hardly saw her.’‘Well, it’s been cloudy for weeks.’‘That’s incred…’ He stops as the waitress reappears

with his eggs. Which are boiled. She glides gracefully back to the kitchen.

The old woman grins. ‘You obviously enjoy complex problems.’

He looks at his laptop. ‘Molecular connections aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.’

The woman laughs. ‘I was talking about you falling in love with her.’

‘Oh no, I...no...’ He feels his face colouring. ‘Must get on.’ He types and eats as quickly as he can.

On Wednesday morning he comes into the café and puts his umbrella in the stand. He had thought about going elsewhere, but this place does have the best coffee and despite himself he wants to see the waitress again. What will she be like today?

She appears as he is switching his laptop on. Her hair is slick and he is sure her eye makeup is darker. She hovers by his table.

‘Hello,’ he offers.‘Your order?’‘My usual please.’‘Your drink.’ As she puts it down a drop splashes

onto the table. She’s crying. ‘Are you... okay?’‘I’ll get your eggs.’ Where’s the old woman? He doesn’t know what to

do with weeping waitresses. There is still no sign of her when the waitress returns. The rain is pouring now and when she puts his plate down her shoulders are shuddering.

‘Can I do anything?’She doesn’t reply but goes to the counter and starts

cleaning it, crying noisily. He eats his eggs warily. There is a slash of

lightening and a loud rumble of thunder that jangles the cutlery. The waitress’s response is to hurl a cup against the wall.

He shuts his laptop protectively. She sees him, gives a scream and smashes another cup.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, ‘Is it your boyfriend? Your boss?’

She hurls a cup at him. He ducks and it shatters against the door.

‘You never noticed me until two days ago.’‘What?’‘Always staring at that bloody laptop.’‘Sorry?’‘What about me? What about looking at me?’She has streaks of mascara down her face, a plate

dangerously aimed at him. A beautifully complex problem. He starts laughing as her plate connects with his head.

‘Can you hear me?’

He opens his eyes to pink.‘He’s awake.’ It is the old woman.‘The waitress,’ he asks, ‘is she okay?’‘Yes, it’s just spitting now.’The waitress’s face appears above him. ‘I’m so

sorry.’ Little tears splash onto him.‘It’s okay.’ He scrambles up, feels his head. ‘Ow.’‘You’re probably concussed,’

the old woman says. ‘I’ll go and get some ice.’

The waitress helps him into a chair. On the table next to him is his laptop. The screen has been smashed. He looks at her and sighs.

She bites her lip. ‘Could I take you out tonight, to apologise?’

‘I don’t know.’‘It’s going to be clear.’ Out of the window he sees

a rainbow.

After years of reading Kath discovered writing. She goes to creativity classes and coordinates an unsecret writing society in the cellar of her local tavern. She is a story slammer and occasional contributor to her local free paper which is enlightened enough to publish fiction. When Kath’s not writing, drawing or Nia dancing, she’s walking her dog and enjoying the colour green.

ly n n e h ac k l esPaid to be frivolous!


hear. They gave me fi ve minutes, asked a few questions and then sent me out of the private room, audition over. As I walked along the queue of hopefuls, all waiting for a place in the line-up of ‘Deal Or No Deal’, I kept being asked, ‘What did you have to do in there?’ and I, smiling sweetly, replied, ‘Take all your clothes off.’ I passed that audition and the rest is history. If you’re really interested you can see an account of my show at the ‘Deal Or No Deal’ Fansite, www.dond.co.uk

There were no cameras in the village hall. Seats had been set out and two members from each of the WIs in the area were there to represent their group. Some held sheets of paper. The really effi cient ones had clipboards. Their task: to give scores out of ten for each speaker.

There were nine and I was the last. We were served with tea and biscuits and asked to sit at the back of the hall. The meeting started on time with a few words from the Chairperson and then we were straight into the fi rst audition.

My spirits sank with each one. No-one else had prepared their fi rst fi ve minutes. They all gave samples of what they would talk about and not the actual words they were going to use.

‘I am an expert on local history and have talks covering the social, economic and industrial history of… This will involve slides…’

‘I have sixteen different talks on the plight of India’s citizens.’

‘My talk will give you all the facts and information you need to know about the demise of the Barn Owl in the UK.’

They were all very interesting and Serious. And there was I waiting to do Frivolous. My hands shook. I was out of my depth. Auditionee Number Eight was covering Garden Design. ‘What are you giving them?’ she said, so I told her how selling a reader’s letter had gone to my head and ever since receiving £2 for it I’d gone on to forge a career in writing by conning people. She laughed.

My name was fi nally called. I wobbled up the aisle to the tiny gap that had been designated enough space

Being a speaker can bring in some extra income for a writer. One thing I have never had diffi culty with is talking, especially when it comes to talking about myself and

my passion for writing. I’ve spoken to many other writers at their group meetings or at writers’ days, weekends, and weeks. A new one for me was giving a talk to non-writers. I’d applied to become a speaker for the Women’s Institute and, after a very long wait, my name had come up and the good ladies had asked me to audition for them. It wasn’t exactly the X-Factor but it was still an audition.

I’d offered two talks and was requested to give a sample of each. Now, being a writer, I know all about opening lines and grabbing your audience. I’d once practised the very same technique on a visit to the doctor. He always sat there, head down, pen poised over his prescription pad and most of his patients had more than a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t know who he was talking to as he never looked up. He was into voice recognition and knew his patients were either male or female. On one visit I was determined to get his full attention so, on walking in and seeing him in his normal pose, I said, loudly, ‘I’d like a sex change.’ It worked! (Not the sex change – I’m happy as I am. I mean getting his attention.)

I could certainly do the same with members of the WI. They were giving me ten minutes so that meant fi ve minutes per talk. A dramatic fi ve-minute intro was written for both – The £2 That Changed My Life and My Experience On ‘Deal Or No Deal’. Like a real pro I rehearsed them several times, making sure the timing was right and my arms didn’t wave about too much. I have been known to stun someone in the front row of an audience by waving my arm with such force that my bracelet fl ew through the air and hit them between the eyes.

The night arrived and I was ready. Was I nervous? No. I’d been to bigger auditions than this. Once upon a time I’d sat in front of a camera and been asked to ‘talk about yourself for a bit’. The words many writers love to

B Y LY N N E H A C K L E S

FRIVOLOUS!PAID TO BE

ly n n e h ac k l esPaid to be frivolous!

thenewwriter.com 13

for a speaker. There’d be no strutting up and down and arm waving. I smiled at all the ladies, who had now been sitting on hard wooden chairs for over two hours, and made a snap decision. I’d scrap my carefully prepared ‘grab ‘em and keep their attention’ words and, instead, tell them what I’d said to Number Eight.

‘Hello. Tonight I am Lynne Hackles. This morning I was a man. Yesterday I was Liz Wilden. I’m a writer and use several different names. My talk, The £2 That Changed My Life, is about how I, who had been asked to leave school at the age of fi fteen so that the rest of the class could concentrate, ended up making a living as a writer.’ I told them how I’d sold a reader’s letter for £2.

‘We were watching seagulls by the River Severn in Worcester. “They’re a long way from the coast,” I remarked to my friend. “Oh, it’s not far if they come straight up the motorway,” came her reply.’

I told them about the accompanying picture of two gulls in an open-top sports car and did a bit of arm waving as I demonstrated steering it. Then I confessed about going directly to the local newspaper and, on the strength of 36 published words, informed the editor I was a freelance writer, and asked for work. ‘Since then,’ I told them, ‘I’ve sold articles, stories and books and live in fear that one day a hand will clamp on my shoulder and a voice say, “Gotcha! You fraud.”’

It made them laugh too and that sound made me want to keep them laughing, which I managed, for my allotted ten minutes, in which time I managed to incorporate a bit more arm waving and hand-fl apping.

The Chairperson, who was in charge of the timer, slapped her hand on her clipboard to indicate that my time was up. I apologised to her for being frivolous and walked between the rows of now very fi dgety ladies. I’d overdone it. Gone OTT as I was often wont to do. But no. Several hands were waving at me. ‘Have you got a business card please?’ I handed out my stock of cards, all thirty of them.

After her thank-you all for coming bit, the Chairperson informed the hopeful speakers that, in due course, they would be told whether they were successful or not. Three months on and I’ve not heard an offi cial word. However, a dozen or more groups have already booked me. I can only assume that, because they haven’t waited for offi cial permission, they are WI rebels. I think we’re going to have fun and I promise I’ll try not to knock any of them out with my bracelet.

Lynne Hackles describes herself as a butterfl y writer fl itting from short stories for women’s magazines, to non-fi ction, novels, children’s books. Apart from poetry and pornography she has tried everything and used several different names along the way. www.lynnehackles.com

FRIVOLOUS!PAID TO BE

Also available from the shop at guisegifts.com

Writers and artists have used the Moleskine notebook over the past two centuries. Its spare design with rounded corners and an elastic page holder has become recognized as the notebook to possess by writers. We stock four of our favourites from the ever-growing range. So why not treat yourself and get writing?

Large Ruled Notebook Bound with the classic, stiff ‘moleskine’ cover and placeholder ribbon, the rounded corners and elastic enclosure keep it compact whatever the journey. The 240 lined acid-free pages are thread bound, and the notebook includes an expandable inner note holder. 240 pages, 210 * 130 mm, 340 gms Price:£13.50 Pocket Ruled NotebookSmaller brother – or sister – to the ‘Large’, the presentation is the same but with only 192 – smaller – pages it’s lighter and easier to slip in a pocket.192 pages, 140 * 90 mm, 141 gmsPrice:£9.99

Ruled Cahier LargeThe fl exible cardboard covers make this pack of 3 journals soft, light and suitable for every pocket. 80 acid-free paper pages, thread stitching visible on the spine. The back cover has a spacious pocket for notes or clippings, and the last 16 pages of each journal are detachable. Pack of 3, 80 pages, 210 * 130 mm, 313 gmsPrice:£8.99

Ruled Cahier As with the Pocket above, this Cahier pack of 3 is the smaller sister – identical except with only 64 acid-free pages of a smaller size.Pack of 3, 64 pages, 140 * 90 mm, 113 gmsPrice:£5.99

MOLESKINE NOTEBOOKS

FROM£5.99


1 4

w r i t ers’ prom p t

A picture paints a thousand words and we certainly find that photographs and other illustrative materials can inspire us to write. With this in mind we will be including in each future issue at least one visual prompt to inspire our readers. Our challenge to you is to produce a piece of response prose or poetry starting with this wonderfully evocative image taken in the New Forest from young photographer James Polley.

Send your responses to [email protected] and we will print a selection of the best.

© Ja

mes

Pol

ley P

hoto

grap

hy w

ww

.face

book

.com

/jam

epol

leyp

hoto

grap

hy

Wri

ters

’ Pro

mPt

i n t r aySuzanne Ruthven

thenewwriter.com 15

If there is one thing that would be sent to my own personal Room 101 it would be those writers who ignore, or refuse to read submission guidelines. Every magazine and publishing

house has its own individual likes and dislikes, which can usually be found in the writers’ handbooks, in the magazine or on the website. But I never cease to be amazed by the number of would-be authors who submit their typescript without ever looking at the targeted publisher’s guidelines or backlist.

Admittedly, the editorial requirements for a writers’ magazine are limitless. Even the brief for my 10 years as commissioning editor for ignotus press was open to suggestion as the ‘mind, body and spirit’ genre covers almost any and every interpretation. With Compass Books, however, the brief is very precise: it is a writers’ resource imprint and it only publishes how-to books for writers.

So why have I received a proposal for Christo-Judaism in the Lebanon?

The reason is probably because to make our Facebook page more interesting, we also include ‘opportunities for writers’ from our other stablemates at John Hunt Publishing.

Instead of reading the actual interview with the individual publishers, the would-be author sees the words: ‘opportunities for writers in the spirituality genre’ and assumes that Compass Books will be delighted to receive this totally unsuitable offering!

The whole point of publisher interviews and submission guidelines is to establish what they want to receive and what they don’t – and to prevent everyone wasting time in sending and receiving material that is totally unsuitable for that particular outlet.

Writers’ guidelines are there for a purpose. They give the writer an overall idea of what a commissioning editor is willing to consider for publication – in their magazine or for their book list.

Trials and tribulations of… a commissioning editorB Y s u z a n n e r u t h v e n

Although they are usually quite comprehensive, a brief glance is no substitute for paying a visit to newsagents or bookshops to get an even better idea of the content, style and taboos for that particular market. The commissioning editor can always tell when the current editions of writers’ handbooks have hit the shelves, because there is a marked increase in the number of totally unsuitable proposals and/or typescripts arriving in the post or by email.

Writers’ guidelines often state what commissioning editors don’t want to receive – or what they are not prepared to consider, including whether they will accept submissions by email. Receiving material that blatantly flouts the guidelines is a source of irritation – just as much as receiving material from writers who have never even bothered to read a couple of issues of a magazine, or studied the backlist of titles to find the right imprint. Believe me, it is obvious.

Guidelines help writers to ascertain just how a commissioning editor wants to receive submissions and whether their initial idea can be tailored to suit the house style of that publisher or magazine. Under no circumstances will a commissioning editor consider books or articles that do not fit into their specified category, and all commissioning editors, regardless of their specific genre, are sent typescripts for children’s books, poetry and other unsuitable projects largely because would-be authors haven’t bothered to find out the basic requirements: items of this type are immediately rejected.

Over the 16 years or so, TNW contributors got used to my quirks and foibles; they knew what I liked and what meant instant rejection. With the recent change of editor(s), TNW readers may have to get used to a different set of guidelines, as no doubt Madelaine Smith and Alison Glinn will shy away from ‘the macabre, the morbid and other black-hued themes’, and stamp their own personalities on the magazine.

I n t r aY

a rvonEavesdropping on the writers’ ball


Ask any writer what they need most, and they’ll answer: time and space to write. For over forty years, Arvon has provided writers with both, through its residential

courses held in historic houses in rural parts of the UK. Anyone who has been to Arvon will describe how that time and space has a profound effect on your creativity. It’s an intense five days, something to do with the experience of being thrown together with up to fifteen strangers, writing, eating and living collectively. Away from the demands of daily life, you spend all day with words; and thinking and talking about words. Admittedly, I’m one of Arvon’s biggest fans. My own writing journey began in 2003 with a magical, transformative week on a Starting to Write course at Lumb Bank, Arvon’s Yorkshire centre. Now, ten years later, I work there – as part of the team which oversees the running of the place.

As an employee, your relationship with time and space in the house couldn’t be more different from that of the writers. The minute you get to work you hit the ground running: responding to queries, making lunch, going shopping, welcoming guest speakers, facilitating the evening sessions and making sure everyone has what they need from one end of the day to the next. Hosting an Arvon course, you experience the most extraordinary time warp. One minute, it’s Monday afternoon and you’re running around preparing the house for arrivals. The next, it’s Saturday and you’re waving them off down the drive. As a writer, it’s a huge challenge to carve out time in the week to put words on the page. And in a job which is all about responding to people’s demands (a spare light bulb, an extra blanket, a room key), there’s little head space for creative thinking.

Arvon has been running courses since 1968. In the early days, the centres were run by live-in Centre Directors, who acted as caretaker-guardians. There were fewer courses back then and the job was essentially a residency: they would be fed, housed

EavEsdropping on thE writErs’ ball:

Arvon, writing and the Cinderella effect

a rvonEavesdropping on the writers’ ball

thenewwriter.com 17

and given time to write in exchange for maintaining the houses and hosting the courses. Since then, Arvon’s work with young people and disadvantaged groups has grown exponentially; these days, the houses are full virtually all year round. At my interview I remember being warned about the levels of energy required for the job – it’s like hosting a week-long dinner party, they said. And they were right. The work of centre staff is varied, demanding and rewarding.

It’s easy to get sucked in to the vortex of the week, witnessing the participants’ creative highs and lows. In the effort to support them, it’s easy, too, to get depleted, to use up energy needed for writing. If I want to do any writing on a hosting week, I have to set my alarm early to squeeze out a few hundred words before the day begins. After a week of early mornings, combined with eight-hour-plus shifts when you’re on your feet most of the day, there’s little creative juice left over.

Then there’s the Cinderella effect. Almost all writers who come to Lumb assume that a perk of the job is being able to sit in on workshops. Far from it. You

glimpse them through the glazed door as you scuttle between kitchen and store cupboard, preparing lunch. If you’re lucky, you might catch a scrap of something tantalising. It’s frustrating, hearing words of wisdom (that could make all the difference to your own writing practice) being doled out to others while you’re stirring the soup.

Yet, for all that, I’m still there. So, as a writer, what does Arvon give me?

It has taught me the discipline of maximising time. Like many others who juggle writing with other work, I’ve learned to make the most of snatched moments – I fi nd myself scribbling notes on my work-in-progress during lunch prep when I’m up against the clock; or mentally sketching out a plot point as I’m driving to the tip. On a basic level, it gets me away from my desk where I’m alone for long stretches of time, inhabiting the world of stories. I’ve come to depend on my Arvon work as the antithesis of that: sometimes mundane, often practical, it also involves direct communication with people and careful reading of social dynamics. It balances me, and reminds me that there is more to life than my fi ctional characters.

Then there are the people, the countless conversations about writing and the creative process. I’m endlessly fascinated by the writing journeys of others. Over the years I’ve learned so much from guests at Lumb – whether they’re there to teach or to learn. I’m energised by those discussions about the struggles and joys of the practice; and, in turn, that energy feeds into my own work, giving me a sense of validity.

Facilitating the evening sessions, during which tutors and guests read from their work, is also a privilege. In the three years I’ve been at Lumb I’ve listened to writers from hugely different backgrounds, working in different genres, with a breadth of preoccupations. On a practical level it’s been a superb training ground for my own performance at readings and literary events. When I once congratulated a tutor on her fantastic delivery, she generously offered to coach me. And so I found myself in the garden, projecting my words to the valley while she gave me feedback. It’s an experience I’ve never forgotten, and which has stood me in good stead ever since (Allegra Huston, if you’re reading this – thank you, I’m eternally grateful).

Arvon is committed to its learning and participation work, collaborating with schools and partner organisations to bring the residential writing experience to those who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it. The biggest buzz I get is from is witnessing how words and creativity can – quite literally – change lives. We’ve had ex-offenders from the Writers in Prison network and bilingual schoolchildren working in their Urdu. Many of the young people arriving at the centres are growing up in a context where books and words aren’t valued or encouraged. They leave not just better writers, but as more confi dent people. Witnessing this blossoming of self-esteem is a reminder of the vital importance of the power of self-expression. It reinforces my belief in the transformative potential of my own writing practice.

At home, writers might have to justify, explain or even apologise for their writing. At Arvon, writing is the bedrock of everything. There’s something incredibly affi rming about that, about working in an environment where writing isn’t a luxury but a necessity. That certainty not only underpins my creative life, it keeps my writing alive.

Rachel Connor writes fi ction, non-fi ction and radio drama. Her website and blog (‘Literary Sisters’) is at www.rachelconnorwriter.com. Her debut novel Sisterwives was published in 2011 by Crocus Books. She is currently working on a radio drama commission, The Cloistered Soul, which will be broadcast early in 2014.

website and blog (‘Literary Sisters’)

will be broadcast

She is currently working on a radio The

Full details of Arvon’s work, including the programme for this year’s open courses (launched on 16 January 2013) can be found at www.arvon.org

© Leanne Bolger



Krystyna GreenM E E T T H E E D I T O R

Krystyna Green Editorial Director for CR Crime talks to us about her career and how her role at Constable & Robinson has morphed and expanded over the years.

Krystyna Green

I’ve been editorial director of the Constable & Robinson crime list for fi fteen years now but in fact it’s been going for as long as I have – both of us started out in 1964! So we both have a big

birthday coming up and to celebrate fi fty years of Constable Crime we’re rebranding the crime list in 2013, one year early, but we couldn’t wait to give it its own dedicated imprint.

Since I’ve been doing the job for so long, I’ve come to realise that the qualities of a good commissioning editor are probably also those that a good midwife possesses – patience (masses of that) prior to the book’s delivery, calmness under pressure, encouragement when your author feels like giving up and, above all, enthusiasm and joy when the book is fi nally published.

It takes years to hone these skills – especially the patience. But you have to be intuitive too and truly believe in your author and their work when they come to you; half-heartedness in this business is a fast track to failure.

I started out in publishing twenty-fi ve years ago, working for a literary agent before deciding I wanted to spend time on the other side of the publishing fence. I worked for Times Books at the time of their merger with Collins, followed by Macdonald Futura. After that I freelanced for a while, which is possibly the closest I have come to understanding what it is to be a full-time writer. It can be incredibly isolating – meetings at least twice a week are a necessity to keep you in the loop and to keep you sane, as the alternatives – wandering around in your dressing

gown until 4pm and eating spag bol for breakfast just because it’s there and you can – is not to be recommended in the long term!

I ended up at C&R, or rather at Robinson Publishing, in 1997 and have been here ever since. During that time the list has morphed and expanded beyond recognition. When I took over the running of the crime list we were publishing twenty-two hardbacks a year, primarily for the libraries. There were very few trade sales and certainly no supermarket or non-traditional sales deals. Indeed, there was no paperback publishing arm and paperback rights to Constable’s most notable crime authors – Peter Robinson and R D Wingfi eld – were sold out of house.

Today’s crime list is a very different beast; we publish about sixty-fi ve titles a year in a variety of formats. We do outstandingly well with series crime and have found our own niche in the marketplace with ‘cosy’ crime, spearheaded by our star author M. C. Beaton, who writes the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series.

In the past few years the sales structure has expanded to cover a broad range of outlets and e-readers have had a huge impact on the list. Over the past couple of years I’ve seen particular authors become outstanding e-sellers, notably James Craig and Alison Bruce, homegrown talent


thenewwriter.com 19

who excel in social media networking and reap the benefi ts in healthy e-sales. The one thing which all my current authors have in common is an awareness of how important self-promotion is, through whatever media are available to them.

Other authors, such as Cath Staincliffe who came up the ‘traditional’ way (library hardbacks followed by paperback six months later), due to consistent high standards of writing, have also made the successful transition to e-sales.

So the CR Crime list now incorporates series crime brought in from the US, homegrown authors with an established backlist and new authors such as Lynn Shepherd and Danny Miller we are hoping to break through in the UK marketplace. Lynn’s fi rst novel for us, Tom-All-Alone’s, was reviewed in every national newspaper. Danny Miller’s dark and gripping fi rst novel, Kiss Me Quick, was runner up for the 2012 CWA John Creasy Award and the protagonist of his books has been described as ‘James Bond, if only he had joined the Met.’

Both these authors now have second books with C&R and we are are working hard with them to garner maximum coverage, both by targeting reviewers and bloggers in the close-knit crime community and participating in crime writing festivals such as those held annually at Bristol and Harrogate.

Relationships are a key element of my role. I have relationships with literary agents that go back over fi fteen years and when they send me a manuscript it’s because they know it will appeal to me and the list. Some authors, such as Steven Saylor, I’ve been publishing for over ten years, as a result of which we now have an incredibly strong backlist which every so often is revitalised with a new format or cover treatment. I have relationships too with booksellers and sales reps, who let me know about (unagented!) local authors whose appeal deserves a broader platform.

My job also involves watching out for authors who are creating a buzz in the US and about once year I visit the various US editors and agents I already have links with, to see whether they have anything new and exciting. This year we publish two great new American talents, Paul Doiron and Elizabeth Hand. Liz, primarily as a fantasy/YA writer, has written two extraordinarily original crime novels, while Doiron follows the tradition of C J Box in setting his crime thrillers in the wilderness of the Maine countryside.

In conclusion, it would appear the key to commissioning a successful crime fi ction list is variety. The job is certainly never dull… and I hope that among this list of rich pickings, there must be someone to suit everybody’s tastes!www.CRcrime.co.uk

j u dy b a r t kow i a kWhat writers’ block?


What writers’ block?Children’s author and self-help writer Judy Bartkowiak explains how the tools and techniques of Neuro Linguistic Programming can help you get your book published.

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is the study of the structure of excellence, which basically means that if someone can do a thing, then you can do it. All

you need to do is discover the structure of your own excellence. How do you do this as a writer? Focus on when you’re writing at your best, when the words and ideas are fl owing fast and furious, when you read a sentence you’ve written and think, ‘Wow, I’m good.’ What’s the structure? What is the difference that makes the difference? There will be elements of behaviour (programming) and self-talk (linguistic) but most importantly there will be your beliefs (neuro). Here are some tips that will help you discover your own structure of excellence.

1If you can’t imagine it, it ain’t gonna happenExercise those visualising skills and focus your attention on creating an image of your book on sale in a bookshop, on Amazon, seeing people reading it on the train, whatever works for you. This is your book, your visualisation, your compelling outcome.

2How much do you want it… really?To work as a compelling vision it has to be something you want. There can be a down-side to putting yourself out there. Maybe no-one will buy your book? Maybe you’ll get some bad reviews? Perhaps you will have to write another one? Face the consequences of achieving your goal and decide to take the risk.

3You already have all the resources.Lots of writers I know spend more time arranging their space, getting the household chores done, checking Facebook than they spend writing. The environment has to be ‘just so’. This is madness. Instead of ‘trying’ to write 1,000 words a day, just get on with it and do it. Remember the occasions when you were determined to do something and did it? Somewhere in your life you have the skill to focus and be ‘bloody-minded’ about doing what you want to do, so get that skill out from the cobwebs, dust it off and get on with writing.

j u dy b a rt kow i a kWhat writers’ block?


4Just who do you think you are?It’s all about identity. I’m a writer. That’s who I am and it’s also what I do. I’m lots of other things but first and foremost I’m a writer. Even if I never have another book published this is who I am. Who are you?

5Anchor a resourceful state.You know when you’re writing at your best, when the words flow and you are unstoppable? When this is happening become conscious of where your energy is in your body. Think about your body posture and physiology; what would someone notice if they were watching you right now? Take a moment to anchor this. We need an action that you can repeat when you want this state of great writing even when you’re not feeling so great yourself. It can be a squeeze of your earlobe, a piece of music, an image in your mind or just holding your favourite pen.

6There’s no failure only feedbackThere are many ways to get valuable feedback as you write; writing groups, The Writers’ Workshop, writers’ festivals, review services and of course your fellow writers, family and friends. These can be great resources for those times when you need to disassociate and view your work from a distance with some emotional detachment. Of course, you could just leave it on your computer in a file labelled ‘my novel so far’… ?

7Are your limiting beliefs past their ‘sell by’ date?There are only two types of beliefs – resourceful

ones and limiting ones. How can you tell which is which? It’s easy. Your ‘I can’t’ is limiting and your ‘I can’ is resourceful. We get these beliefs from our childhood but that’s where they should stay. Dump the limiting ones because they don’t serve you and replace them with resourceful beliefs. Before you tell me that you can’t change a belief I’ll just ask you one question, ‘Do you still believe in Father Christmas?’

Copy-editing & proofreadingFull book design service

Printing & bindingPromotion & marketing

Book distributionCommission-free online bookshopeBook production & distribution

Free & friendly adviceCup of tea and a chat!

Confused about self-publishing?

York Publishing Services Ltdtel. 01904 431213

[email protected] by the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook

YPS are the one-stop-shop for self-publishers

www.yps-publishing.co.uk

Judy Bartkowiak is the author of ‘Be a happier parent with NLP’, ‘Learn Market Research in a Week’, ‘NLP Workbook’ and ‘Self Esteem Workbook’, all published by Hodder Education. She writes children’s fiction under the name JudyBee and has self-published a number of NLP workbooks including the Engaging NLP series.

Judy can be contacted via The Society of Authors or through her website www.judybartkowiak.com



When I was 11 years old, I wrote in my diary, ‘I’ve started a new novel today which I’m going to get published.’ I believed that to get a book published

all I had to do was write one. It was a shock to discover this was not the case.

I later learnt that the book had to be brilliant. Not only that but it had to land on an agent’s desk at the exact moment they were savouring a fresh cup of coffee, the sun was shining and they were feeling a profound love towards all humanity. Rejection was inevitable. If you were very lucky you would receive a personal letter, and only then to tell you that your book was rubbish but your font had potential.

Patience is not my greatest virtue. By 24 I was fed up of waiting for someone to pluck my work out of the slush pile and bless it with their approval. All I wanted to do was write and be read. And so I began a blog about the only thing I really knew anything about, which was working in my Mum's eccentric chandelier shop. At fi rst my readership consisted of a few friends and relatives, but gradually my following grew. I took my weekly deadline very seriously and edited as ruthlessly as if it were going to be printed in a national newspaper.

Emily BenetShopGirlDiariesEmily Benet does for chandeliers what Bridget Jones did for publishing

B Y E M I LY B E N E T



thenewwriter.com 23

Six months after I began, Salt Publishing got in touch with me via Facebook and told me they loved the blog. More importantly, they commissioned the book Shop Girl Diaries which is the name of the blog that, four years on, I still write. Since then I’ve contributed to three blogging guide books, run several workshops and I even wrote the script for a TV pilot starring Katy Wix as Shop Girl.

My experience has been a very positive one but a successful blog doesn’t happen over night. Blogging takes time, perseverance and doesn’t pay a penny, and yet, if you stick with it, it can reap wonderful rewards. Salt would never have found me if I hadn’t opened up to writing online. Having a regular blog increases your chances of visibility and it makes you accessible to those who might be interested in your work. You also become part of a huge interactive community which can stimulate and support you in your writing quest.

Blogging doesn’t make a novel easier to write or a rejection letter any sweeter, but it does keep you focused and forces you to write when you’d rather put your head in the sand. If you’re tired of waiting passively in the hopes that one day you might be discovered, then maybe it’s time to be proactive and embrace the blogosphere. You never know what it might do for you!

What is a Blog?The main component of a blog is the blog post which is basically an online column. When you add a new post it appears with the date stamped across the top so readers can see how old it is. Blog posts are automatically archived online in chronological order.

A working blog should allow for interaction with readers. People should be able to comment on your work and share it on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. You don’t have to be on either Facebook or Twitter to have your work shared there.

Nowadays blogs look much like websites with pages of static content and attractive sidebars.

Can anyone write a blog?You do not need to be technically minded to start a blog. Hosted blog platforms such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com have become increasingly easy to use. When I began blogging a knowledge of html was required but now you can achieve a wonderful looking blog with basic IT skills. If you are familiar with using a Word programme then you are capable of setting up a blog. Personally, I find Blogger the most user-friendly, but other bloggers might disagree. Spend time exploring your blog platform before you begin and if you get stuck, type a question into Google and I can almost guarantee an answer will pop up to help you.

What am I supposed to blog about?Writers have a tendency to blog about the writing process, but why limit yourself? The aim is to show off your ability to write, not to prove that you are physically writing. Before you launch into your first blog post, take time to consider what you might follow it up with.

Does the idea excite you? If you write about what you think you should write about rather than what you want to write about then your blog probably won’t make it past six months. A blog doesn’t have to be for life but a readership takes some time to build up so it's worth thinking in terms of years rather than months.

Will it excite anybody else? A blog shouldn’t be an online diary of what you had for breakfast and how many cups of tea you drink a day. A blog should be either entertaining or informative, or both! Think about what you would be interested in reading and write that.

Can you sustain it? Not just physically, but emotionally too. You might be inspired to start a blog because you want to rant about a particularly awful journey to work. Perhaps your follow up post is a rant about the cold coffee you were served at lunch. Ranting might be therapeutic for a while but be careful, it could get exhausting. You don’t want a blog that drains you, especially if you intend for it to last.

What should my blog look like?Blog platforms allow you to adjust the template, colour, font and margins of your blog page. The most important thing is that your blog is easy to read. There is nothing worse than struggling to read fancy fonts. Keep it simple. If you’re comfortable reading it, then other people will be.

Think of your blog as an environment that reflects your blog's theme. A blog centered around an interest in Crime novels will look different from one on Romance.

You might think a black or grey background will make your blog look sophisticated but is it easy to read? Blogs with dark backgrounds and white writing can be very hard on the eyes.

Beware of being a perfectionist. You can play with your blog’s design until the cows come home, but what really matters is that your writing is brilliant. Unless of course your blog is on web design, in which case it needs to look pretty slick.


Blogging doesn’t make a novel easier to write or a rejection letter any sweeter, but it does keep you

focused and forces you to write when you’d rather put your head

in the sand.



How long should my post be?You have your idea, signed up to your blog platform, chosen your template and are now ready to write your fi rst blog post. So how long should it be? Bearing in mind that the online reader is usually being bombarded with information, has a potentially shorter attention span and is likely to be scanning, it's best not to make your blog too long. I recommend a word count of around 400 words. This is not a rule; this is a suggestion. However long your blog post is, don’t forget to add space around it by breaking up long paragraphs. White space is costly in the printing world, but online it’s free.

How often should I post? It’s no good posting one blog every couple of months. To gain a following you need to update regularly. And remember, there’s a date at the top of your post, so if people see that you haven’t updated in a few months they’ll assume your blog has come to an early end. Choose a frequency that suits your lifestyle. Some blogs are updated every day but often it’s because they are collaborative blogs where there are more than one writer. Updating your blog once or twice a week is a good number. Always choose quality over quantity. Better to delay a post than to publish any old rubbish!

Will anyone read it?There’s no point having a blog if you’re going to keep it a secret, unless you’re writing things you shouldn’t be! Tell people about it. Add it to your writing business card and your e-mail signature. If you’re on Facebook use your status to let people know when you’ve added a new post. If you’re on Twitter, add your blog link to your profi le and tweet when you update.

Think carefully about the titles of your posts as they need to hook your reader. The title is also a link which is indexed in search engines such as Google. If you’re writing about homeopathy then add homeopathy in the title because that’s what people will be searching for! Before posting make sure you’ve used keywords to describe your post in the label/tag section of your blog.

Gaining a readership takes time. Your main concern is to write the best blog you possibly can, because when people fi nd a good thing, they love to spread the news.

Emily Benet is a London based writer. Her fi rst book Shop Girl Diaries was published by Salt Publishing and was based on her blog, which was voted winner of the Completely Novel Author Blog Awards in 2010. She is currently writing a serialised novel on Wattpad called Spray Painted Bananas and runs Blogging for Beginners workshops. She blogs at www.emilybenet.blogspot.com

guisegifts.comguisegifts.com is the new online shop for newbooks, The New Writer and bookoxygen.

guisegifts.com went live in April with lots of highly desirable gifts for writers and readers – more than we have space to include in the magazines. So as well as Sarah Hough and Moleskine; Instead of a Card and 100 Must Reads we’re bringing back the Penguin mugs and adding new items as fast as we can.

Why not check us out – you’ll be surprised at what we’ve found!

guisegifts.comPerfect gifts for passionate readers and aspiring writers

comguisegifts.com went live in April with lots of highly desirable gifts for writers and readers – more than

Card and 100 Must Reads we’re bringing back the


thenewwriter.com 25

SOMETHING NOT QUITE RIGHT

Anna was on her knees in the snow at the foot of a tree, her head bent over, face hidden. Rita sat with her back pressing against the bark, legs stretched in front of

her, staring ahead. The last light of the short day had fi nally slipped away. They had been silent for about ten minutes, and lost for about six hours.

One way, and then another, they had paced along possible paths in the forest, drifting snow following them at each wrong turn. Anna had fi nally sunk into the snow and refused to walk any further.

Rita looked at Anna’s crouched fi gure. ‘I don’t know how you think this is going to

help,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘just sitting here, doing nothing.’

Anna didn’t move. ‘I’m tired. We don’t know where to go. It’s pointless.’

‘I’m so cold,’ said Rita. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to keep walking? At least we’d keep warm.’ She stood up.

‘Come on, Anna.’Anna still didn’t move. Rita got hold of her arm and

began to pull.‘Get the hell off me! What are you doing?’‘We have to walk. Come on.’ Rita pulled again on

Anna’s arm. Anna lashed out at her mother with her other arm, fi ghting her off. Rita let go and turned her back on her. Anna shifted her legs to one side and leaned back against the tree, her arms clutching her knees.

S H O R T S T O R Y

B Y LY N N E W O O D WA R D



‘You won’t help yourself, will you?’ said Rita, finally. She sat down next to Anna, placing her hand on

Anna’s arm. ‘I just think you don’t try to make the best of things

that’s all. We all have choices, Anna. Like now. We have a choice.’

‘One dead end or another.’‘Life is full of opportunities, if you only look, Anna.’‘Uh-huh. Opportunities. Life is full of

opportunities. So tell me. About all the opportunities you’ve had. Yes, do tell.’ Anna grasped her knees a bit tighter.

‘Stuck in that house, with that man. Hardly.’‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Rita. ‘You know damn well what I mean.’There was a pause. Then, ‘Please, Anna, let’s just keep walking?’‘No. I’m staying here. You walk if you like, if you

think it’ll make any difference – I don’t.’ Anna shut her eyes.

The snow continued to fall: millions of soft white fragments, falling and resting on branches; falling on Rita’s boots, on Anna’s jacket, on Rita’s thin blonde hair peering out from under her woollen hat; falling on Anna’s knees pointing up to the sky, and on Rita’s gloved hand resting on Anna’s arm.

Winter was slowly loosening its grip. Water collected in pools on the grey grass, and trickled down paths to the lake.

The melting snow was releasing its prisoners, one by one. Looking from his window, Per thought he could see the skeleton of an old box, some bits of broken veranda, and maybe the remains of a window frame he had forgotten to put away in the summer. He could just make out their blackened, rotting parts poking up at odd angles through the remaining piles of wet snow. He went out to clear them up before his visitor arrived.

Karin had rung this morning. He didn’t really remember her. She’d been a friend of his sister’s, or so she said. He didn’t think of Anna as someone who had friends, though there were enough people after their disappearance who claimed to have known that his mother and sister had planned to run away to Spain, or some such nonsense.

When Karin arrived he ushered her into the living room and offered her a glass of wine, which she accepted. He didn’t recognise her; she looked older, more competent than his sister. She’d left the village, of course – had another life now.

They sat at right angles to one another around a low table, looking out of the wide bay windows at the fading light.

‘Per – it’s about Anna,’ Karin began. No surprise there then. ‘Oh yes?’ he replied.‘I’m sorry to have to ask, but – ’ She took a breath,

and looked down. ‘To go straight to the point, what

I wanted to ask – need to ask is – do you think Anna was happy?’

‘Happy?’‘It’s just this feeling I’ve had, for a long time now –’Per frowned. ‘Only,’ Karin paused again. ‘Well, it’s this: all they

had to do was keep walking, to keep warm. They could have saved themselves, couldn’t they? It’s as if – do you think it’s possible that they didn’t want to be found?’

Per’s fingers repeatedly smoothed out the material of the arm of the chair as Karin continued talking.

‘When we were at school I felt something wasn’t quite right for Anna. I ignored it at the time. I feel so bad, when I think about it.’

It was more than two years ago his mother and sister had disappeared, out looking for a Christmas tree. Now they were dead. No bodies found, but dead for sure. What possible good could come of talking like this?

‘I’m sorry, to have to ask. Per, do you think they might have chosen to die?’

Per listened to the familiar sound of the clock ticking. He had slept in a room with it, woken with it, lived with it most of his life.

His mother had always been there for him. It was unthinkable she could have chosen to leave him. Unthinkable.

‘Per?’ Karin’s quiet voice demanded his attention. ‘Was it

him that made their lives so miserable?’ Per’s breathing quickened. ‘Who?’Karin leaned forward. ‘Your grandfather.’His grandfather. His grandfather had gone into a home, when his

mother and Anna had disappeared. Per had inherited his clock, that was all.

‘You must have known how it was – you lived in the same house.’

He thought of the downstairs room where he used to sleep as a child, next to the clock. His mother in the kitchen, her blonde hair tied up in a brightly patterned scarf, frying mincemeat. His father out at work. His grandfather asleep upstairs, in the room he shared with Anna. Anna sitting quietly on the back door steps, cleaning her grandfather’s shoes.

Per had moved away from home the year his father died, leaving his mother and Anna to live in the house with his grandfather. He had been glad to move away.

Karin rested her hand on his forearm.‘I feel there was something not quite right, at

home, for Anna. And Rita. To do with him. Is there anything you know that might help me understand this Per? Anything?’

Living in a small house, things could sometimes feel intense. Uncomfortable, in a way.

One day his mother laid out his grandfather’s clean shirts on the living room table. His grandfather’s thick arm had swept them into a crumpled heap on the floor, and his swivelling rheumy eyes had



watched as Anna picked them all up. Per had gone out, and when he came home, his mother wore fresh lipstick and asked him what he’d like for his tea.

Was that ‘right’? How would he know? That’s how it was.

Per crossed his arms, allowing Karin’s hand to fall away.

‘Look, Karin, there isn’t anything, that I can think of. Really. No clues. None.’

He bent down to pick up an envelope that had fallen onto the floor.

‘They went into the forest, got lost, and died – end of story. There’s nothing more to be said. I’m sorry.’

Per looked over his back garden. There was more tidying-up to be done, and he wondered how much longer Karin would stay.

Per would think, though, about what Karin had said; he would allow these memories to surface slowly, and then settle.

Three years later, as the snow melted, his mother’s and sister’s bones would be found under a tree in the forest, just some hundred metres from where they had left their car. By then, Per would have already disposed of the clock.

Lynne Woodward lives and writes in England and Sweden. Originally from London, she now spends a lot of the year in Kiruna in the far north of Sweden, where she and her partner run a bed and breakfast called 68 degrees (which is the latitude north). She is inspired by the landscape and the way it can reveal character by the way people interact with it.

She also writes a blog about her life in the north, www.blog.68degrees.se

Why not take a look at thenewwriter.com?

6 NE W MUG SONLY

£8.95 EACHSEE PAGE 64

TO ORDER

Also available from the shop at guisegifts.com or call 01962 620320 between 9am and 5pm

£8.95 Each plus p&p. Order two or more p&p free. See page 64.

INFUSED WITH LOVE

E ARL GREY

cov er pho t o gr a ph y com pe t i t ion

thenewwriter.com 29

We are launching a competition to fi nd cover images of future issues of The New Writer.

The judges will be looking for originality as well as visually stunning images that refl ect the spirit and content of The New Writer. We would like you to be as inventive as possible. The winning images will be printed as covers of future issues of The New Writer or may be used to illustrate articles and stories within the magazine.

FORMATThe New Writer format will remain as A4 vertical so we will be looking for portrait images. Text announcing the contents of the magazine will appear over the top of the image and the magazine title may be cut out from the image, so bear this in mind when composing your shot. The colours of the photograph may defi ne the colour palette of the issue.

JUDGING PROCESSEntries will be judged by a panel on originality, technical profi ciency and visual impact. The winner will be revealed in Issue 115 when it is published in July.

HOW TO ENTERTo enter, please email a maximum of three high-res images (300 dpi at A4) as separate emails to [email protected] ‘Cover Photography Competition’ in the subject fi eld. All submissions must be your own work. Please include your name, contact details and a brief description of your submission.

COST OF ENTRYUp to 2 photographs (3 for TNW subscribers) £5.00. Payment for entry can be made via the competitions page on www.thenewwriter.com

The deadline is midnight on Saturday 1 June.

C O V E R PHOTOGRAPHY COM PETITI O N

conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM




conc ep tContent



Apr

il/M

ay/J

une

2013

Issu

e 11

4 | £

5.00

Poetry in focus



THENEWWRITER.COM






Found poetry is all about taking text from one source, perhaps an un-poetic one, such as a newspaper, instruction manual, or recipe, or a literary source such as a novel, and using

them to create a poem. At one end of the spectrum the poet keeps all the words and the order, but adds their own line breaks, or they might add additional words and change the order. At the other end, the poet might harvest material which they quote within their own poems.

Noted and quoted famous poets took text from other sources and put them into their poems: Ezra Pound used official documents in parts of The Cantos, and Eliot included material from Shakespearean theatre and Greek mythology in The Waste Land. Evelyn Waugh took the title for his 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust straight from The Waste Land:

“And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Chinua Achebe did the same, taking the title for his novel, Things Fall Apart from Yeats’s The Second Coming.

To create a whole collection based on found poetry is hugely challenging and time-consuming, but Pam Zinnemann-Hope masters the concept in her collection, On Cigarette Papers (Ward Wood Publishing, 2012). To find out how this book came about, I contacted Pam and her publisher Adele Ward.

“When my mother [Lottie] died in 1990, two years after my father [Kurt], I found an archive of letters, photos and objects that she had left me”, says Zinnemann-Hope.“Amongst them was a tiny pile of cigarette papers with writing in Russian, pencilled in her hand.”

The book begins with a foreword and dramatis personae. A chronology of events is included at the back of the book, as well as a list of her sources.

A collage of wordsP o e t r y i n f o c u s

And I’m Clearing Up the House…

Now you’re gone, mother,I wear your pink angora cardigan.I like its softness against my neck and wrists,your smell of cigarettes and Joy de Patou.

I find it edgy in the house without you.You’ve put everything in order for me,even tied the right key to each suitcasein the attic. You would!

–

You know that Russian proverb?It’s in Solzhenitsyn:‘No. Don’t! Don’t dig up the past.Dwell on the past and you lose an eye.’

It goes on:‘Forget the pastand you’ll lose two eyes.

Up until this point she had only known the bare bones of her family’s history, but with help from three of her mother’s friends, Erna, Tilde Goldschmidt/Goldsmith and Elizabeth May, she began putting the pieces back together. Erna was a German Communist who ended up in the UK. Zinnermann-Hope’s parents met her in Russia and her story is told in one of the poems:

Kharkov, August 1937Erna’s Tale

How come my husband is arrestedfor ‘crimes against the state’?

I need to find comfort.I want to see my friends.I set off for Kurt and Lottie’s in the heat.

Their landlady doesn’t speak,she points at their boarded up door.

B y A B e G A i L M o r L e y


thenewwriter.com 31

So in 1996 Zinnermann-Hope began her research and writing. The search for a family history and search for self-identity is what drove her on to write: “I have no brothers, sisters, cousins, no-one else to share the loss of ‘home’ with.”

Gathering the material together was a huge task, especially as it was essential that Zinnemann-Hope found not only her voice, but those of her characters. “It was a process of accumulation. Structuring it was the most diffi cult. It was workshopped at RADA with some fi ne actors, and this helped to pinpoint the gaps and pull the structure around. Workshopping with other poets also helped that process. Ultimately it had to fulfi l its dramatic imperative.”

At her launch at the Poetry Cafe, she read alongside actors, Anthony Shuster (War Horse) and Deborah Finlay (Cranford) – bringing the book alive. Adele Ward said, “Hearing Anthony Shuster reading the voices of the German men, alternating with the various women's voices read by Pam and Deborah Findlay, really made me realise how she had changed the voices for the characters and caught them so well.”

“I get a number of submissions about the Holocaust, but there is something different about this story,” says Adele Ward. “A woman who is the daughter of a Nazi is determined to marry the Jewish man she falls in love with, even though that means being disowned by her family, risking being caught, as her father puts in a personal phone call to Göring to close the borders, and putting up with prison under Stalin's purges in Russia and then incarceration on the Isle of Man when they fi nally get to England. We would all want to fi nd love like that, so it adds something positive to such an emotional depiction of an important part of history.”

Every Night In Her Sleep (My mother’s dream)

It draws me down.Deep under turquoisethe water is lapping me.

It keeps retreating.

I can feel the yellinglodged in my chest.I open my mouth:

no sound comes out.

I try to push it out.I get no breath.

And it keeps coming back.

Day after day I graspat straws of sunlight; I’mbeached on hot dry sand.

Night after night I swimand stand in this stifl ing sea.

I want to breathe.

I can feel the silkinessof the water.I can open my mouth.

I want to yell.

My face is bursting,held in by the water,the power of the water.

And it keeps returning.

On Cigarette Papers hooks you immediately and is almost impossible to put down. I read it in one sitting and was blown away by it. I needed to reread it several times to take in the enormity of the project and the beauty of the individual poems. I agree with Zinnemann-Hope when she says, “It’s an extraordinary story, a cracking good story to tell and it takes in much of the turmoil of 20th century in Europe. It demanded to be told.”

When a poet uses found poetry, they should set their own constraints by analysing the material, selecting creatively and retelling something that needs to be told. It is up to the poet to decide whether or not to use only found material, with no words of their own – or to include just a few snippets from another source.

Writing found poetry can help a poet in a number of ways. It can act as a trigger – a playful way of releasing our creativity; join words together that we weren’t expecting and give a different slant to our writing, often taking us somewhere new. By responding to various genres we develop our interpretive skills; use language that might be alien to us and make something ordinary, poetic. Our editorial skills gain importance – we need to craft our piece; shape our lines; tighten the structure. It is not just collecting words; it is collecting the right words for our purpose.

So select your scissors and get snipping.

A collage of words

their own – or to include just a few snippets from

ways. It can act as a trigger – a playful way of releasing

various genres we develop our interpretive skills; use language that might be alien to us and make

lines; tighten the structure. It is not just collecting words; it is collecting the right words for our purpose.



23 Days of SummerTwenty-three days, and then again the change,although there is the blended time when allseems one. The seasons' dividing lines are more calendar markings for setting seasonal dreams.

Twenty-three days – then will my wardrobe change?Will fl ights that course the summer sky at nightbecome less clear – and lose all their allure –no longer causing hopeful thoughts to rise?

Why must after supper coffee at 8 p.m.,on still warm chairs retaining afternoon sun,dissolve to late October hurried cups;the sliding patio door now sealed shut?

Twenty-three days and absorbing what is left,like garden herbs straining along the fence,and dried out sunfl owers not angling to the skywith the vigor of their robust days of strength.

Michael Ugulini


How The Cat Got Your TongueIt slipped through an open window,one July night. A ginger tom;

a ragged ear, one white foot.You were almost asleep

when it padded over, jumped onto your bed and stared, its purr

low as a distant lawn-mower.Sat on your chest, nudged lips

apart with its nose. Its whiskerstickled. You felt oddly calm.

Its bite was fast and clean. There was very little pain.

It took your tongue back to a barnand nailed it to the wall, with all

the other tongues; slept for an houron a bale of straw, then slipped out,

under a slice of moon, sniffi ng the air.

Catherine Smith

for Alfred JDo you remember last AprilI wanted to play truth orDare? – fi nally fi nd a way toDisturb your inequanimity, tipThe bowl full of stars over, bet theUniverse on your reply.

E.E. Nobbs

Hawk mothNot at but actual loggerheads, at least that'swhat we called them, the noisy hawk moths fl apping roundmy bedroom light on summer evenings.Too scared for sleep in case a furry body brushed against my eyelid, fl apped its furry way inside my mouth for me to choke on feelers, wings makes me smileto think about it now I've dangers ofthe real and present kind keeping me awake at night.This back of mine for starters got so bad I couldn't pull my socks on, had me thinking I was fi nished, crocked. That's why I'm sitting ramrod straight instead of slouched, buttocks clenched, doing pelvic tilts and getting funny looks on the metro home from work. The great thing is this new regime of sitting right has taken years off mebending stretching feeling supple. I’m a boy againcaught between his fear of dark and furry bodies fl apping at the light.

Larry Marsh


thenewwriter.com 33

Dark To Themselves They were dark to methen,the people of my holiday townswho slumped in bussesand sweated in summer windowswhile I carried buckets of salt waterto fi ll my castle moatsor sat in caravans with summer bookslistening to the rainthunder on the metal roof

just as I am dark to them now,invisible to the boys with tentsand pockets full of pillsstanding at the bus stopwaiting for the bus to Glastonburyor T in the Park,or even the old men in straw hatson the road to Ilfracombestill dreaming the old dreams

while my bus turns for workand their cars turn for the motorway,the dream-way, the sleeping in the carand the fi ve a.m. wake up to bacon charred on the side of the road,tea with powdered milkand days like letters guaranteeing good newswaiting to be opened one at a timenot rejection after rejection

and this is the real world, they tell me,the one we all have to live in;the rest is just a dreamthough its more real than any factory,brighter than the dulled sunburning through wintered eyes

when the boy in methe best of melooks to the open roadand still refuses to die.

Ian Mullins

Magnolia stellata’s bloomsslip now out of furry bud-sheaths like young handsfrom wool-thick mittens.The small tree’s limbs are full of petals – cool, white skin

with streaks of pink. They unfurlinto smooth fi ngers. (All winter they were tight fi sts,afraid of frost-bite: sore, pinched.)

Let’s blame the extremity pains on age, the cold, fatigue. Ad nauseum. Time spent in darkness. I’ve self-diagnosed osteoarthritis and fi bromyalgia.

Who knows. And I’m menopausal. And Advil 3ú, 200 mg.And omega-3 pills branded Joy.Can’t help it – break open,

stretch, rotate wrists, bend bits, arch, undulate. Aches (partly) turn into tingles... … realize (fi nally) it’s April. Again.

E. E. Nobbs


man fallingthe sea's mouth was full of diamonds scudding across the surface like a swarm of silver bees

but the ocean itself was silenthiding its charts in its pockets did you notice? even the trees like passers-by on a busy streetpretended they had no part in this

when we saw him falling it was clear he hadn’t known water could be as hard as rocks on a Cretan hillside

I felt so sad knowing he’d started the day like the rest of us on our way to work ambitious confi dent wrapped in his own thoughtsexpecting too much from everything

Caroline Carver



On Visiting The Ulster Museum We make our way through

the winding corridorsand rooms

of the recently refurbished Ulster Museum

and look at the relics of time’s detritus

all arranged and displayed in strict

chronological order from the Mesozoic era

through to Ancient Egypt and the Armada

and we read the snippets of information

which help explain these grand narratives

of past cultures intended and complete

and we follow the arrows around the museum

from beginning, middle and end

until we reach near the exit

our own recent past of broken glass

and shattered lives collected and

preserved in neat little rows and boxes

Oliver Mort

PaletteInspired by the painting by Anselm Kiefer

An angelis burning.

Thin fl ames featherthe black bonesof its wrecked wings.

A blank eye is movingover cratered cities

as wings fl y up in sootand descent begins,

the dead-drop over Dresden,Kabul, Sarajevo,over the gates of Dachau –

an artist’s palettecollides with concrete,

turns to kindlingat survivors’ feet.

James Kilner


Proof‘In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.’ George Orwell

How shall I lie to you? Let me count the ways:I shall lie by my silence, quiet as my oldest scar; I shall lie by inference, letting you believe your choice;I shall lie by omission, carefully removing clues of words;I shall lie with my tongue, lips, brow, hands, footsteps and fi ngerprints – the easier to be consistent;I shall lie when it suits you, and doesn’t suit me;I shall lie when it suits me, and doesn’t suit you;I shall lie recreating the past, necessarily;I shall lie about the future, unintentionally;I shall lie in broad daylight and semi-darkness,with my eyes closed and open; by your side and remotely;I shall lie without meaning to, from habit and instinct;I shall lie to myself, fi rst, to show you my honest face.

Heidi Williamson


thenewwriter.com 35

The Shoe of NightWe slipped into the shoe of night,saw two children discard their bicycles hepsi mepsi on the front lawn, then spin a hint

of a hoop up to a crescent moon. Beatrice leads the nuns to their night time offi ces, her long hair lifts like a cloud in the silver air, words swarm

like bees in our brains but none of us sings, none of us sings, none of us sings. I climb a wall twelve centuries into the future and I’m not coming down.

Wind’s toppled the scarecrows like dominoes, a tabby patrols the line of lettuce, fat nests of rooks are blobs on bare trees. Where did those children go?

Their parents peer from the windows of the white house.A nun tells me they’ve cycled to the moon. Her ninth century dreams are full of wheels and cogs.

There are walls everywhere here on earth, around gardensand houses, tumbled down in the nunnery, hiding nothing.Heaven has no walls just its grey secret of rain rising above us.

The nuns fi le out of the church, pulled by the waves down to Martyrs Bay, the grey lift and drag of the seasucking them in. No pilgrim arrival tonight,

just the devotions of water. If the shoe of night fi ts, wear it, cry the children from the crescent moon, they’ve ignited Venus, its ancient light hangs like a lantern.

We stand around, like kings and queens on a grave slab,propped up in the box they call history. We’re wondering where those children went, the ones who look like our shadows.

Victoria Field


Battle StatisticsOn VacationOr When Numbers Are Not For CountingWalking on the listlessshingle by a presumablyindifferent seahe murmured to any passing gullprepared to listen,he murmured how they die,these numbers,though numbers are notsupposed to die;however that may be,he was thinking,thinking of the children:surely to make up the numberthey must count them too.

Though privilegedthese numbers,now mortal as ourselveshe murmured;surely they must seekto be unnumbered,beyond the immeasurable reachof arithmetic, zero seekers to awoman to a man, to a child;their goal thatof which there can be no less;zero seekers drawn to a place,a universe where numbersdo not count,where matter has, the shape,and the content of, vacant space…

Who could possibly desire less?

Alfred Gosschalk

The Goldilocks ZoneHold me.

‘Happiness is a how, not a what;a talent, not an object,’said Herman Hesse.

If I could freeze this time with you -one day over before the next begins -I would.

It all feels simple, skin on skin,you on my lips, the smell of us.‘Just right,’ said Goldilocks.

But she was somewhereshe did not belongand the bears were coming home.

Let’s sleep.

Emer Gillespie


Ten Pre-Raphaelite Poems Ten Poems about Puddings Ten Poems by The Romantics

Ten Poems about TeaTen Pre-Raphaelite Poems Ten Poems about Puddings Ten Poems by Ten Poems about Tea

Ten Poems about Bicycles Ten Poems about London Ten Poems about Love Ten Poems about MothersTen Poems about Bicycles Ten Poems about London Ten Poems about Love Ten Poems about Mothers

Ten Poems about Mothers

K9569_mother_poems_vis9.indd 2 12/01/2011 10:52

Ten Poems about Cats Ten Poems about Dogs Twelve Poems about BirdsTen Poems about GardensTen Poems about Cats Ten Poems about Dogs Twelve Poems about BirdsTen Poems about Gardens

INSTEAD OF A CARD

Thirteen Poems of Revenge Ten Poems about SheepThirteen Poems of Revenge Ten Poems about SheepTen Poems about FathersIn Memoriam: Poems of Bereavement £5.95

INSTEAD OF ONLY

£4.95 EACHSEE PAGE 63

TO ORDER

Each of these includes a poetry pamphlet, a card and a bookmark on which you can write your greeting. Simple but clever. We love these for friends and relatives who enjoy poetry.



On TowWe hover at the end of the tow barpoised like the kestrel above, which rakes the hedgerow with keen eyes,as we watch the rear of the van for signalsready to respond not instigate; Stella grips the wheel,arm muscles taut against a familiar road rendered alien.Unnerved by the blank view ahead, I exploit my passenger status,lose myself in the autumn,in a sky marked by the toddler scrawl of vapour trails, boldstarts and stops crisscrossing the blue, ending in the downwardtrajectory of wavering interest;a shivering V of Canada geese catch the sun, white stomachs sparkling-they make their own journey, carefully maintaining their position with their colleagues.

At the roundabout our heads swivel in unison,eyes widening at the approaching traffi c, the timingout of our hands;the bar grates its own protest beneath the car as we proceed,swinging into the gyre.We accept the mechanic's autonomy,hover; await the chance to regain control.

Ali Pardoe

First of the SeasonDown from the cab I dismountInto the misty air of the market,Where sound is colourAnd colour is everyone.My father gropes at loose potatoes,Massages their life-dirt into his fi ngers,Tosses away the peculiar onesAppraises the larger with touch alone,The smaller weighed by the eyes.Some potatoes, I notice,Are mere knuckles of vegetation,I can clasp them like marbles,Muddying my palms into prints as well.He sacks the potatoes rigorously,The brown burlap, soundlessBetween fl esh thuds of vegetables,His lips tally each unitAmidst the haggle of the market crowd.He hoists the sack,As tall, I guess, as my nine Years,Knots his biceps to the heave,Slackening the weight across his back;He too can shoulder the harvest.

Ashleigh Davies


Where Are You From?(On Alighiero Boietti's Mappa)

After forty years of answering:'England. Yes.One hundred percent English.'I fi nd myself by this mapmade up of fl ag-coloured countriessearching for that one small place,believing it would be rightfor embroiderers to blendgreen and goldto merge with the whole island.And I fi nd myself relievedto see its tiny red, white and blue,not through any traceof national pridebut in case I may have toanswer that question'Nowhere'.

Adele Ward



DispositionI think I was born with a tank of cheerand would dose you with someif only you'd dare to drink, my dear-the fact you don't being my fault, I fear,for insistently acting so cheerfully dumb.But it's only because of the way you appearfrom afar, about to change your mind, and come.

James B. Nicola


TransientA fl ower's petals liedislocated on the table,gathered in sad montage,fallen like careless acrobatsbalancing their scentacross a whole room.

Yesterday a still lifelearning to impress,today an artist's nightmare.

No sign of vandalism,just the messagethat's been leftas a reminder.

Gordon Scapens

The Walnut Babyafter Leonardo da Vinci's Studies of the Foetus in the Womb

Looks like a split walnut,a protective carapacewith an upright baby.Not the fl exible sacwhich let you stretchlike a synchronised swimmerDad's voice your soundtrack.Relief when you turned upside down,ready for the dive of your life;the everyday miracle of birth.

The walnut foetus cowers,folded in on itself,hiding its unseeing eyes;like an image used to houndwomen into incubation.A not-yet lifethat would be a breech birth,exploration of thought,drawn by a manwithout reference to woman.

Emma Lee

ToadstoolsDrenched in velvetwith darkest mosses,where the green whitehellebore grows witchy and wild,under the shadows of fallen branches,you'll fi nd them there;hoodies – huddled together,poisonous and up to no good.

Ayelet McKenzie


thenewwriter.com 39

Summer ManI long to be a Summer Manand walk through waves of corrugated heatwith the sun on my shoulderthe world would be new again.

I remember a summer of peacewhen my old townfried in its pan alley joy.The dogs and cats sleptsafe under a blue fi re sky.

The air hummed withthe summer song a crazy mixof bird calls insect wingsand always happy lawn mowers.

Then I heard thunder rollingbuL no lightning forked the day.

Overhead a fi ghter jetripped the heavens in twowith its viper traila tear on the face of God.

Phil Knight

IvinghoeDirectly belowCrows, close skeinedJump and jitterShining wood spritesBlazed onto open ground

Jet shadowRips in rowsOf ghost greened cornCarpeting parched heathPocked with chalk

Walker breasts the riseHatless, haunted by heatI sit, static in silenceThought meteredBy putteringsOf the ice cream van

Cars glareGlassed in sunGlowing podsSkinned steelWaiting to animate

Conversation lowers, lullsMercury risesln clear blueGlider turns a wingNearly realSun rains down relentlessAncient breezes blowWe dream

Mark Gifford

The Snow Leopard at WannseeIs considering the pointof yet another poemabout the turn of season–

for tonight you can tastethe Steppe in the air-frostcan feel the leaves point

and smell in the mist the steeland blood of campaigns lostof hard-fought harvests gone.

He can see the leaves curlon the planes and linden,veins stiff and brown and done

and by the lake hearthe call of the Caucasus’south eastern song

where high white wastesmight slip past his fur,stalking svelte Saiga

and with their blood anointhis clouded coatuntil the summer melt.

Colin BeggThe Snow Leopard was Highly Commended in the 2011 Prose & Poetry Prizes


WRITING TOGETHERWRITING ALONE

w r i t i ng t o ge t h er , w r i t i ng a l on eUsing small ads from your local paper


In this, the fi rst of a new series, we will outline a writing exercise that you may wish to try, either with your writing group or for your own pleasure. We would love to hear how you got on with this exercise, and hope to publish examples of writers’ results. Also, if you have any exercise that went down well with your group, or that you found particularly helpful as a starting place for yourself, please let us know, and maybe it will appear in a future issue of The New Writer.

w r i t i ng t o ge t h er , w r i t i ng a l on eUsing small ads from your local paper


Example: From The Herald 5 February 2010 Result: Letter – from Felicity Brown to Ursula Williams

Thank you to Olive Drakes for this. At the urgings of her writing group Olive went on to write two more letters; Ursula’s response to Felicity and a fi nal letter revealing a twist in the story, and it all started with a small ad. So take up your pens and get writing…

Dear Ursula,

Your behaviour has left me feeling weak and ill. I am devastated. How could you treat me like this? I have always been a good aunt to you. You have no inkling of the sacrifi ces I have made for you over the years. Never having been blessed with children of my own, I have always made you welcome in my home. I’ve taken you on holiday with me, bought you expensive gifts and provided you with so many little treats, which your parents were unable to afford. I never expected anything in return but I did hope to be treated with a little consideration, especially now that your poor uncle has passed on, leaving me lonely and bereft.

When I spotted the advert you had placed in the Bargain Buys column of the Herald I felt ready to faint. I am sure you must be aware of that picture’s history and what it has meant to me since my childhood. I’m not sure how it came into my mother’s possession but throughout World War 2 she would draw the attention of us children to it as a symbol of hope. Our country was at war with the people of Japan but better times were ahead. What a majestic sight! Mount Fuji printed on silk in such beautiful, strong, vibrant colours at a time when everything around us seemed drab and grey. How I have always longed to see the original; Japan’s highest mountain and one of the holiest sites in the whole of that fascinating country, so wasted on its warlike people.

Had I been cast in a selfi sh mould, a fault so glaringly obvious in some people of my acquaintance, I would have saved every penny in order to take a trip out there instead of lavishing so much on you. Too late now, of course.

I have always been certain that my dear parents meant me to have that picture when they passed on; but your mother, who never showed me any real consideration, got her grasping hands on it fi rst. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it is the living Daisy I have in mind. Always my big, bossy sister right to the end. She made a point of telling me that she had given it to you when she made her last move. No room for it in her sheltered fl at, she said. And she knew, she knew how much I had always wanted it – I would have made room for it even in the tiniest hovel.

When my carer rang your number, which you had so blatantly appended to your nasty little advert, she was told not only that the picture was already sold, but that it fetched a paltry £8! £8 for what to me was a priceless family heirloom!

I might as well tell you straight out that I have already been in touch with my solicitor and made certain changes to my Will! Any attempt at future contact between us would be futile.

From your aunt in great distress,

Felicity Brown

BARGAIN BUYSPicture of Japanese scene (Mount Fuji in background) printed on silk. Strong, vibrant colours. Good frame and mount. Approx 20mount. Approx 20*40". £10. Phone—

U S I N G S M A L L A D S F R O M YO U R L O C A L PA P E R

m ee t t h e agen tMaggie Phillips


Maggie PhillipsM E E T T H E A G E N T

Maggie Phillips of the Ed Victor Literary Agency shares some thoughts on her role as an agent and gives some good advice.

You have an idea for a novel? I’d like to encourage you. Let your creative imagination run free. The

story is developing nicely: agents will be out-charming each other to sign you up. There will be a frenzied auction of your UK publishing rights, and then a prestigious sale to a US publisher, followed by at least twenty translation deals. Erica Wagner will devote a whole page of The Times book review section to your work, suggesting you may have started a new genre. You’ll be interviewed by Mariella Frostrup. You will be packing in the fans at literature festivals. Film rights will be sold: your moment on the red carpet (what will you wear?), and Ryan Gosling will thank you, tears in his eyes, Oscar in hand, for writing him the best role he will ever play. You are choosing furniture for that house in the South of France you have always wanted.

You haven’t written a word yet? I thought so. If we were to read every word of every submission

we receive here at Ed Victor Ltd, we would not have time to promote the interests of our existing clients. Agents are in business to take care of their author clients, to maximise revenue for them (and for the agency) from publishing deals and the sales of fi lm,

stage, audio and radio rights. We take a good look at every submission, and if something grabs our attention, then we will read all of it, and share the material with colleagues. This is how we like to receive submissions: a short letter, telling us a bit about yourself, a one-page outline/synopsis of your book, and two or three chapters. That’s enough for us to decide if we would like to read more, with a view to possible representation. And don’t give up the day job – when I read a letter on

the lines of “I have given up my career in the City in order to concentrate full-time on writing” my heart sinks, and I know I will not be able to handle the expectations of such a person. It’s an appealing thought – you don’t have to go out in the rain! You can write in your pyjamas, you can write in bed! But bear in mind that only a very few authors are successful enough not to have to take on other work.

Read Stephen King’s book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. The advice is excellent (‘don’t use adverbs’ – I totally absolutely agree) and along with it you get the compelling story of his early years and struggles. Stephen says he does not work out his plots in advance, but lets the characters take over. Pay heed to any author who has sold hundreds of millions of copies.

m ee t t h e agen tMaggie Phillips


Personally, I am easily lured into a book by a vivid opening sentence. We all know the two most famous ones: Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice. Both are philosophical in tone, but here’s one with action, The Marquise of O— by Heinrich von Kleist:

“In M—, a large town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O—, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-bred children, published the following notice in the newspapers: that, without her knowing how, she was in the family way; that she would like the father of the child she was going to bear to report himself; and that her mind was made up, out of consideration for her people, to marry him.”

Wowza! What is going on – what is going to happen! How can you resist reading on?

Many years ago my boss, Ed Victor, was away in America, but had told me that I should expect a manuscript by Josephine Hart to be delivered to our office. The manuscript arrived early one morning, and I thought I would just read the first sentence .....:

“ There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.”

Three hours later, Ed called and was somewhat put

out to hear I had spent the entire morning reading Damage, and had not done a good many things he had asked me to take care of. But once he had read it himself, all was understood.

I would love to be sent more sequel books. There are dozens of Jane Austen follow-ups, and none of them is entirely satisfactory, and some of them are dreadful. I’m waiting for a book about Kitty, the least defined of the five Bennett sisters, always in the shadow of lurid Lydia. At the end of Pride and Prejudice we have the impression that she benefits from her older sisters’ marriages. But tell me more! Surely Kitty would have met someone nice (or someone really nasty) when staying with the Darcys at Pemberley? But the sequel I would really like to read is to Anna Karenina. Yes, yes, we have lost our heroine, but she had a baby daughter, Anni – what would have happened to her? The stain of illegitimacy would have lingered throughout her life, and who would have brought her up? Karenin was probably her legal guardian, or perhaps Vronsky’s mother would have cared for her? Anni would have lived to see the Russian Revolution. Research would be necessary, but what a story this could be.

Are you really going to write that book? Good luck! And if it’s an imaginative sequel, or has a brilliant first sentence, then please send it to me!

Shakespeare House168 Lavender HillLondon SW11 5TG

Please see the article by Mark Le Fanu on page 55.



B Y R E B E C C A S M I T H A writer is meant to have a beautiful retreat. Dylan Thomas had a boathouse, Roald Dahl, an elaborate shed, and Vita Sackville-West had an Elizabethan tower

at Sissinghurst Castle. Somewhere along the way I forgot to acquire a cabin or an eyrie of my own. I have completed four and three-quarter novels and a non-fi ction book but still don’t have a proper desk.

Although mine isn’t a huge oeuvre, people do sometimes ask me how I manage. I have an almost full-time job and three children, but have never believed that the pram in the hall is the enemy of creativity. My fi rst baby’s arrival spurred me on to fi nish the novel that had been fl opping around in my notebooks for years. When your time is rationed, you learn the discipline that a writer needs.

A writer has to create space for herself - the space to think and read and to make false starts. I’ve learnt how to do that, to construct my writing space wherever I am. I’m good at writing bits of things and at picking up where I left off.

A half-constructed summerhouse

W R I T I N G S PA C E S

© H

. G. Sm

ith


thenewwriter.com 45

I always carry writing materials with me; I have learnt that this is necessary. I can remember fitting a whole scene onto a supermarket receipt when suddenly I had a few precious minutes but no other paper. It is probably because I am spectacularly lazy that I don’t much like writing at a desk. I would far rather write sitting on a sofa, or in a café, or on a train or lounging on a bed. The liminal place between sleeping and being fully awake is often where composition begins. I tell my students this. The university timetablers often give my creative writing seminars 9 o’clock starts. The students aren’t that pleased, but I think it can be useful. My students won’t be aware (or probably interested) that their tutor has been up since six. Their tutor should have been writing at that early hour, but has probably just been answering emails, vacuuming, seeing her children off to school and college, or marking assignments.

Getting up and writing straight away is the secret of getting things done. I love my university work, but marking over eight hundred thousand words of creative writing each year does take its toll. My own writing gets pushed out during term-time and I sometimes feel as though my characters are lost in the woods or trapped wherever I have left them, poor things, sitting about clutching cold cups of tea. It’s impossible to write a complete novel in a university vacation, so I have to find ways of writing all year round.

My editor at Ivy Press for Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life’s Dilemmas was a hard taskmistress. The moment I’d sent her something it would come flying back with requests that I cut thirty seven words, add further footnotes or solve the problem of an orphanB. I wrote the last parts of it sitting on the floor in my son’s room, working while he slept. He had what we now think was whooping cough, and was off school for weeks. I had to write when I wasn’t looking after him, or teaching or marking. My partner took time off work and my mum helped too. Whooping cough is so violent that sufferers often throw up. This isn’t how it should be in the Sissinghurst writing tower of my imagining.

I sent off the final chunk of copy for my Jane book exactly a year after I’d first been to visit the Ivy Press offices in Lewes. I am a non-driver and had travelled by train along the coast from Southampton, changing at Brighton. Days out like this are a treat. My life is very samey (home, family, work, school concerts and meetings, and not as many cultural events as I’d like) but this suits me. I half dread our summer holidays and almost punched the air when I read that Anne Tyler dreaded hers too. What writers often need is stability, for nothing to be happening. I have to fit writing around other things, but if the other things are Just Normal Things, it is so much easier.

Perhaps the reason that I don’t really have a functioning desk is because the whole house is a giant desk to me. I like writing on the sofa when there’s nobody in, or in our so-called dining room where the growing piles of books mean that the walls are moving inwards like those garbage-crushing walls in

Star Wars. When it’s not too cold I can work in our attic bedroom. We live on a hill and I like to think that I can see as far as Chawton, but I’m probably deceiving myself. I have a small office at the university. It was constructed by boxing off part of a corridor. One wall is a huge window that looks out over the tennis courts, I even have a little terrace; however I’m usually so busy seeing students that I can’t spend time writing there.

An Ikea Alve corner workstation was meant to change my life, to make me more efficient and productive. It’s a big pine cupboard with doors that open to reveal, in theory, a beautifully organized space with a pull-out surface for a laptop. There is enough room for a printer, convenient holes for cables, and lovely deep shelves for books and files. The books are triple-parked now, but somehow it has never made the transition from big pine cupboard to perfect desk. It’s useful for storing work-related stuff and for hiding the clutter of family life, but who wants to stare into a cupboard when they are writing? I need a window.

Last year we bought a summerhouse. The idea is that it will be that longed for retreat, that peaceful place to read and write. My sons are already talking about dartboards, punch bags and snooker tables, but I will stand firm. Only those things that are beautiful and useful will be allowed in the summerhouse, and that doesn’t include sports equipment. For months the summerhouse remained as a flat-packed behemoth, taking up most of the garage. There just wasn’t a free weekend when it wasn’t raining, snowing or blowing a gale. The summerhouse is now half-built; it has been in this state for weeks. We are waiting for another weekend without a storm. It doesn’t have a roof yet, and doors and windows are a distant dream. I know I’m lucky to be somebody who has a garden where she will one day have an idyllic retreat, but in the meantime, it’s just business as usual. I will keep on writing, finding the spaces between everything else, while trying to maintain the Sissinghurst tower in my mind, the place that a writer must be able to reach if she is ever to get anything done.

B A lone word on a line at the end of a paragraph is called an orphan.

Rebecca Smith’s first three novels, The Bluebird Café, Happy Birthday and All That, and A Bit of Earth are published by Bloomsbury. During 2009 and 2010 she was the writer-in-residence at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. Her first work of non-fiction, Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life’s Dilemmas, is published by Ivy Press in the UK and Tarcher Penguin in North America. She teaches creative writing at the University of Southampton.

t h e w r i t er’s bo ok sh el f


OX FOR D DIC T IONA RY OF R E F E R E NC E & A L LUSIONby Andrew Delahunty & Sheila DignenPublisher: Oxford University Press

I'm a huge fan of the Oxford range of reference books and fi nd them extremely helpful with all aspects of my writing. Yet this one had somehow escaped me, so I was delighted to get the chance to look at this one. It’s a gem.

The main body of the book consists of alphabetized entries covering all manner of people, places, books, characters, events and sayings. Each entry gives an explanation of the heading, which is fascinating in itself, but the really useful part is the example of how it might be used as a reference. So not only does the book provide sources for nearly 2,000 entries, but it also shows how they might be used in practice.

For example, we can look up a phrase like ‘the writing on the wall’, meaning an omen of disaster, and learn its origins in the biblical book of Daniel, and see it used in context in a modern business magazine. We all know the movie ‘Jurassic Park’ but I wouldn’t perhaps have thought of using it as a reference to a situation where sensible precautions are sidelined and chaos prevails.

The book also contains a thematic index at the end, so that if you know what your theme is, ‘beauty’, say, or ‘mystery’, you can fi nd directions to entries that will provide a reference for that.

This is such a helpful book for writers, allowing them to bring freshness and originality to their work by helping them avoid the same old expressions and clichés. Be warned, though. Once you start digging through this, your attention will be sidetracked and you’ll end up fl ipping back and forth in search of new nuggets of information rather than actually writing.Willow Thomas, Lymington

N E W OX FOR D R H Y M I NG DIC T IONA RYPublisher: Oxford University Press

The New Oxford Rhyming Dictionary certainly lives up to

its reputation as a member of the Oxford reference book family. The introduction provides a solid foundation for those new to rhyme and an invaluable source of encouragement for those better versed in poetry. It is relevant not just for writers/poets but also for singers, journalists, advertisers, and politicians, even those using rhyme to aid memory prior to an exam.

The layout is innovative and grouped depending on sound rather than in the traditional alphabetical format of other dictionaries. For those unfamiliar with this method the layout may be confusing, however, I have found this set up has encouraged me to browse more and discover alternative rhymes I may not have come across otherwise. With the 45,000+ most up-to-date English words listed in the easy to follow index, words such as iPod, Google, and Twitter in addition to names, countries and nationalities and tips for alternative methods of rhyme, the variety of options available to the reader is countless.

Having written a children’s book based on rhyme, I truly wish I had this when I started writing. The New Oxford Rhyming Dictionary is absolutely invaluable and a must for every bookshelf.Lydia Roshanzamir, London

HOW T O W R I T E A ROM A NC E NOV E L : A BEGI N N E R’S GU I DE T O GE T T I NG I T W R I T T E N A N D GE T T I NG I T P U BL ISH E Dby Susan PalmquistPublisher: Compass

This is a beginner’s guide to writing and publishing a romantic novel and at only 85 pages is very accessible. It’s written in an informal, chatty style and the twelve chapters are all broken down into very short segments, with ‘Things to Try’ lists and summaries of the main points.

It covers the expected topics such as characterisation, dialogue, point of view and sexual tension but without going into a great deal of detail. I was disappointed there was hardly anything about plotting or structure and while the author stresses how important it is to have internal confl ict she doesn’t really advise on how to achieve it.

The book is good on providing a breakdown of the main romantic subgenres, markets and how to submit a manuscript. Unfortunately the overall impression I got was that the book had been written and published in a hurry to capture the Fifty Shades of Grey wannabe market. There are lots of typos and lengthy excerpts from the author’s own novels, which felt like padding.

This might be a useful starting point for someone considering putting pen to paper for the fi rst time but for me I want more substance and advice on the actual writing and editing processes than are offered here. Rebecca Kershaw, N. Lincs

HOW T O BE A W R I T E R : SEC R E T S F ROM T H E I NSI DEby Stewart FerrisPublisher: Summersdale

If you’ve ever suspected that you might have

a book in you, if only you knew where to start and more importantly how to fi nish, this book is for you. Not for the faint-hearted, it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to giving would-be writers a reality check, but there is plenty of humour to soften the blow. An experienced writer and editor, Stewart Ferris willingly shares a wealth of experience and the mistakes he made

T H E W R I T E R ’ S B O O K S H E L F

If you’ve ever suspected that you might have a book in you, if only you knew where to start and more importantly how to fi nish, this book is for you. Not for the faint-hearted, it doesn’t pull any punches…

t h e w r i t er’s bo ok sh el f

thenewwriter.com 47

W R I T E GR E AT DI A L O GU Eby Irving WeinmanPublisher: Hodder & Stoughton

This book, one of the Teach Yourself Creative Writing series, is aimed

at writers of all levels. It includes chapters on building character using dialogue, direct and indirect speech and interrupted/multiple speech. Each chapter follows a similar format: fairly short and snappy sections answering a particular question (for example What does dialogue do?), Key idea boxes summarising each topic, Try it now writing exercises, and case studies showing how particular writing techniques have been put into practice.

The subject of this book appealed to me. Writing convincing speech is always a challenge; it’s inevitably artifi cial, but still has to come across as natural. I fi nd myself spending a lot of time thinking about how to achieve the right balance between dialogue and narrative.

Available from all good high street and online bookshops

The End of Oulipo? Members, fans and critics of this literary experiment in pattern and the written word wonder where next?LAUREN ELKIN AND SCOTT ESPOSITO As The Oulipo literary experiment in pattern, number and the written word enters its sixth decade, its members, fans and critics are wondering: where can it go from here? 9781780996554 £9.99 118pp 2013

Failure, A Writer’s Life JOE MILUTIS Failure is a catalogue of literary monstrosities, a philosophy for the unreadable, and a map for new literary worlds. 9781780997049 £14.99 296pp 2013

Surfi ng The Rainbow visualisation and chakra balancing for writers SUE JOHNSONColour code your writing for greater success 9781780998695 £9.99 108pp January 2013

So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer? Writing for magazines, newspapers and beyond DEBORAH DURBINThe easy way to earn a living from writing for magazines and newspapers. 9781780994925 £9.99 110pp March 2013

Telling Life’s Tales A Guide to Writing Life Stories for Print and Publication SARAH-BETH WATKINS All you need to know about writing life stories from planning to publication. 9781780996172 £9.99 134pp March 2013

The Writer’s Internet A Creative Guide to the World Wide Web SARAH-BETH WATKINS The Writer’s Internet is the essential guide to the World Wide Web for writers and authors. 9781780997858 £9.99 124pp March 2013

The Country Writer’s Craft Writing For Country, Regional & Rural Publications SUZANNE RUTHVEN A “How To” covering one of the largest marketplaces for writers across the English-speaking world.9781782790013 £9.99 153pp May 2013

How To Write for the How-To Market SUZANNE RUTHVEN Detailed instruction and analysis covering writing for the widest marketplace in creative writing. 9781780997223 £11.99 164pp June 2013

Write a Western in 30 Days with plenty of bullet-points! NIK MORTON Breaking down how to write a western, including research and target publishers. Shoot that MS off in a month! 9781780995915 £11.99 203pp June 2013

Zero Books for critical and

engaged refl ection

www.compass-books.net

www.zero-books.net

Compass Books for new writers

For me, the book’s earlier chapters (Character in dialogue and Narrative in dialogue) were the most helpful. These include some thought-provoking advice, for instance on how a small variation in speech can distinguish between character voices.

I found the later chapters of less interest, particularly the section on journals, letters and diaries. In addition, some of the extracts used as case studies are rather too lengthy and are not always clearly distinguished from the related commentary, thus becoming rather confusing at times.

The Try it now exercises are perhaps most suited to those writers seeking a structured set of exercises to work through on a regular basis, rather than those looking for a more informal approach. (I have to admit to skipping the exercise that involved editing an extract from Washington Square into contemporary language!) This book would certainly stimulate discussion within a writing group however, and some the exercises could easily be translated into group activities or homework.J.D. Oswald, Winchester

himself in order to illustrate the most effective means of preparing your work for submission and coming to terms with the often disheartening and lonely actuality of a writer’s life. It’s like having ready access to your own guru and it’s the personal touch that sets it apart from more prescriptive alternatives in the crowded self-help market.

It’s not the equivalent of a creative writing course and it’s probably not the only writing manual you would ever need but it serves its purpose well as a highly practical guide to the nuts and bolts of pulling a writing project together to give it the best possible chance of success. A reasonably slim volume with short chapters and lots of sub headings it’s easy to dip in and out of, and I was particularly impressed with the breakdown of the different types of editing stages, which I will certainly be referring to again. A beginner could do a lot worse than this for a concise and pragmatic introduction to the bewildering task of making your writing publishable.Melanie Mitchell, St Albans



Show your paintings,’ Kelso had suggested. ‘Some of them are fine.’

The end of term art exhibition. Myra faced it without hope. Failure was gathering

itself in the near future; already she could see its moronic smile.

Myra stood in the large hall the college had designated as exhibition space. Her own allocation was a corner of blank walls and a bare floor. She’d brought several canvases and propped them up against a nearby table, but for a second she contemplated leaving the space as it was. ‘The theme is emptiness,’ she would say. Or impotence. The tutors might even admire her effrontery.

‘They’re pretty good, your paintings,’ Kelso had said. ‘Put them up.’ Easy for him to advise. His own exercises in neo-Rackham pen and inks were beautiful creations; minutely detailed, works of love. ‘It must have taken you hours,’ Myra had said when she’d first seen them in the autumn. He’d smiled.

Gazing about the hall, Myra saw not only Kelso’s work, but the fruits of all the other students’ creativity: Jenny, not long out of sixth form, but gifted beyond her years; everyone knew her portraits of the

S H O R T S T O R Y

poor and dispossessed would be a certain passport to University, here in Manchester or further afield. Then there was William, the retired bus conductor, and his smoky swirling pastels.

It was enough to break one’s heart.True, over the last year, she’d gained competence

in drawing, knew how to block out an image, draw a likeness. But this dogged perseverance served only to underline a fundamental truth; she was talentless. All she could hope for was to put up some of her best – and the word felt heavy with irony, were there such divisions as best and worst when it came to mediocrity? – some, then, of her less inept watercolours, and hope to scrape through the assessments.

Myra grimaced. She’d done well to be accepted on the course. An impact greater than that was too much to hope for. She’d overheard Jenny discussing her work with another student, and from the girl’s pretty lips had fallen the dread words; ‘Sunday afternoon painter.’

But it was all of a oneness. Her flat was less a living space, more a mausoleum for the Arts: clumsy sculptures; aborted novels; poems tucked away in drawers, with rhyme schemes that even Myra

B Y R i c H a R d H u l S e


thenewwriter.com 49

found trite. Her interest in photography had lasted longer, but without providing satisfaction. Why she’d believed studying fine arts at the college would have been any different was a far greater mystery, a more rewarding area for conjecture, than anything she’d created in the last two terms.

Myra made her way home through the gloom of a Manchester evening. The hand of winter was still obstinately gripping the city. She passed a television shop, its screens showing the latest pop bands and situation comedies: they blurred together as she walked; ferrety landlords in moth-eaten cardigans and long-haired singers in platform shoes. A lorry sailed past, all yellowish light and hissing tyres. She kept going. By the time she reached Salford, the clouds above its grimy streets were dark, and there was a faint touch of rain in the air. Her head was down.

On the pavement before her she noticed a spool of sound recording tape, with several feet of it unraveled, a wispy brown thread fluttering in the breeze. Preoccupied, she went on past it. Such banal sights were common; together with the woolen glove on a park railing or a discarded shoe in the gutter, they were a curious side-product of modern urban bric-a-brac. Why people felt a need to deposit them on the high street rather than in dustbins was another matter.

She kept going, and then, on an impulse, stopped. She went back a few paces, and looked down at the tape with greater interest. The spool wasn’t broken, and the tape, though loose, was intact.

Myra sat at the kitchen table with nail scissors, glue and sellotape. The rain that had threatened an hour ago was drumming at the window. But she liked rain, at least when safely indoors; its rhythm was soothing.

She sipped from a mug of tea, and as she sat back, caught her reflection in the wall mirror. Perhaps it was an odd nuance of loneliness to be startled by yourself, although solitude was preferable to some of the men she’d found company with; Graham, whose gesture of farewell had been the practical one of taking her gas and electricity savings.

Repairing the tape was trickier than she’d first expected. It had been trodden on, and inches of it were irreparably creased and crushed. She cut these pieces out, joining the ends together with dabs of glue.

Myra went to the cabinet, and dug out her Philips reel to reel recorder. It had been an amusing novelty when she’d bought it a couple of years ago, and she supposed everyone who owned a tape recorder had once felt the same. She inserted the spool and threaded the beginning of the tape through.

All of this was a whimsical notion, anyway. What did she expect to discover, the electronic equivalent of

a message in a bottle? It would be music recorded from the radio, or some inconsequential conversation. An hour of blank emptiness was even more likely, leaving her sleepy-eyed with boredom long before its end. Still, this task filled her evening. And, arguably, there was a kind of creativity to it, an attempt to find significance in the commonplace. She pushed the play button.

Myra watched the movement of the tape; it hissed in the quiet room. That was the thing about night. It placed a layer of silence upon all things.

A man’s voice; ‘This is track number four.’ Nothing further for several seconds. Myra waited.

Screaming. She sat, stunned. A child’s voice? The screams

began to cohere into words. Other voices became interspersed. Three people: a man, a woman and a child. It was the child – a girl – who was screaming. Through the whimpers and sobs, it wasn’t evident precisely what was happening, but the cries were harrowing. At one point, the woman’s voice threatened to hit the girl if she didn’t keep quiet. The child was pleading, saying she wanted to go home. The man’s voice was monotonously obsessive, repeating the same demands for compliance. The woman clearly supported his demands.

The tape, the voices and cries, went on. It ended, grotesquely, with the abrupt intrusion of music, a Christmas carol, The Little Drummer Boy. Then, nothing. There was no clue to indicate how the story had finished.

Myra became aware of the hard wooden back of the chair against her shoulder blades, the tick of the rain outside. The world was as it had always been. The recorder gleamed in the electric light.

She breathed deeply. When she raised her hand to her forehead, the palm felt damp. She tried to make sense of her impressions. It had lasted about ten minutes. Torment, pain and fear had been at the forefront. Alone in the flat, she had just listened to what was clearly the most dreadful of assaults.

Kelso brought two cups of coffee from the student cafeteria. Myra stirred hers, more for form’s sake than for any practical purpose; she took neither milk nor sugar. Always a solidly-built girl, since turning thirty she’d become more concerned about the spread of her hips. She tapped her cigarette into the ashtray; nicotine was worse for the health – or so the new medical warnings were increasingly claiming – but it didn’t put fat on.

‘Disturbing, undoubtedly,’ said Kelso, thoughtfully. ‘Can you place the accents?’

He’d listened to the tape that morning, in one of the college’s unoccupied offices. Daylight had done nothing to diminish its force. Kelso was from London, where he had an agent who promoted his paintings. He and Myra were dissimilar; he brought a whiff of metropolitan sophistication that was alien to her. But, perhaps by dint of contrast, he was one of the



PEMBROKE COLLEGE University of CambridgeSummer programmes for a wider audience

The summer of 2013 will see two exciting additions to Pembroke College’s already impressiveportfolio of summer programmes. Devised in collaboration with leading practitioners, they are

designed to give those with a keen interest and some background an experience of the bestthat the Colleges and the University can offer:

International Security and Intelligence in the 21st Century is chaired by Sir Richard Dearlove,Master of Pembroke and former Head of the Secret Intelligence Service, and Professor Emeritus

Christopher Andrew, and brings together an unusual and impressive assembly of speakers.

The Art of Writing is a collaboration with the National Academy of Writing aimed at writers andaspiring writers and featuring leading literary figures such as Sir Michael Holroyd and Deborah Moggach.

www.pem.cam.ac.uk/summer2013/More about these three-week programmes can be found at:

Pembroke 'New Writer' Advert:Pembroke CAM Ad 4/3/13 16:32 Page 1

few people on the course she’d developed any rapport with. He could be aloof, but she respected his opinion.

Myra had identified the accents. The woman and the little girl were from the local area; the flat vowels and the turns of phrase were unmistakable: ‘Can I tell you summat?’; ‘Don’t dally.’ The man’s voice, however, was not.

‘I can’t place him,’ said Myra.Kelso frowned. ‘British Isles, but not English.

Scottish, maybe? It sounds like he’s trying to minimise it, though. As if he’s trying to present himself as more southern, or perhaps just more educated, than he is.’

Myra nodded. Her knowledge of Scotland was scanty and distanced; popular images of bagpipes, kilts, lake monsters. She’d never even visited the country. The only personal contact she’d had was years ago; when she’d been a typist she’d had a crush on a dark-haired young man from Glasgow who worked in the same office. He was quiet and good-looking. But he’d been too shy to ask her out. Nothing had come of it.

‘So,’ said Kelso, ‘disturbing, but also unproven.’ ‘Unproven in what sense?’ asked Myra, startled. It

was a word she hadn’t expected him to use. ‘I mean, we can say what they represent – the

voices – but not what they are.’She stared. ‘I think it’s pretty bloody obvious.’

‘Is it?’ Kelso put one hand up, a tiny gesture, appealing for reason, for analysis. ‘Something clearly happened, yes, but at the moment you have no way of knowing what that something is. All you know is what it sounds like.’

Kelso had been a lecturer in history; a reluctance to run to judgement was ingrained in him. But this was carrying intellectual dispassion to ridiculous extremes.

‘Come on, Martin,’ she said. ‘That’s far too guarded.’ ‘Look, I’m just starting with basics. What you’ve

found suggests something terrible has taken place, but…’ He trailed off.

‘But your point is?’‘That you can’t be sure it’s real.’She was offended. Did he think she’d invented this

herself? ‘I can’t imagine how you can seriously think it’s

not real.’He saw her defensiveness. She didn’t care.

Disguising anger had never been encouraged in her family. When she was twelve, growing up in Gorton’s mean terraces, her father had ordered her to beat up anyone who bullied her or he’d leather her himself. She’d learnt to do just that. It was a world she’d tried to move on from, but the inheritance stuck.

‘I’m saying, Myra, consider. It might be a grisly practical joke. Or you might have stumbled on a



rehearsal by some actors, some extreme theatrical piece that was never performed. The content could be entirely fictitious. Mightn’t that explain it? How do you know it wasn’t recorded off television from Play for Today?’

Myra thought about it. These were possibilities, some more easily checked than others. But she didn’t believe they were true. She wasn’t even sure she wanted such a prosaic explanation. That was part of the tape’s chilling power. The voices hung in space, isolated from either origins or resolution.

It was three days since she’d found the recording. If mundane reality was her concern, it had proved remarkably unsuccessful in asserting itself. Out of a mixture of responsibility and caution, she’s taken the tape to the local police station in Salford, and played it to a sergeant. He made notes, but, to her relief, he let her keep the recording.

A day or two later, the telephone in the hall rang, just before she headed off to the arts centre. It was the same sergeant. Questions had been asked, possibilities eliminated. There were no unsolved cases of missing children.

The officer’s voice, humming in her ear, was reassuring. Naturally they’d continue to check, but they were inclined to think the recording wasn’t what it seemed. It was a hoax, perhaps.

‘If you think about it, miss,’ he added, ‘why would anyone leave a clue like that in the middle of the street? Just waiting for someone to pick up?

Myra had no expertise in the subject. But she suspected real life criminals were not the resourceful figures of made for television movies. They were likely to be as confused and mistake-prone as all other branches of suffering humanity. She mentioned this to the officer.

‘Well, yes, miss. Sometimes, in panic, they might drop a weapon, a knife or a gun. But this is different.’

The comment was true as far as it went. The sergeant’s voice took on a winding-down-of-conversation tone.

‘Don’t worry about it. If it was real, he would have to be a pretty incompetent murderer.’

‘Murderers,’ said Myra. There were two adult voices. Nonetheless, she was relieved for reasons that

went beyond the obvious. She’d been anxious they might confiscate the tape, and that would have disrupted an idea that had formed.

Myra swept away her paintings from the corner of the gallery. She stacked them in a side room and left them amid the dust and clutter without a second thought. In the corner space, she constructed a bed, with blankets and sheets disheveled and unmade. By its side she placed a small table with a stopped clock (symbolic, she thought; time, death). She

included a teddy bear, one from her own childhood, with much of its fur worn away from the passion of her infant embraces; this, she put on the pillow. She placed a single white sock, a child’s, on the floor. In a surreal touch, she hung a wooden frame from the ceiling, surrounded by black curtains. The frame was intended to represent a window.

‘Why the window?’ asked Kelso, who’d stopped by to watch the display coalesce.

‘It represents Escape,’ said Myra, ‘but because it’s hanging in mid-air, the concept is illusory.’

‘Interesting.’The installation design was a combination of

guesswork and logic. She’d listened to the tape a dozen times, trying to analyse it closely. It was clear from the quality of the sound that it had been recorded inside a house, in a relatively small room; there was no sense of spaciousness or echoes. Myra also instinctively felt the location was a bedroom. For all their depravity – or, perhaps, because of it – there was an intimacy about the adult voices that spoke of seclusion, of secret shadowy things done away from the thoroughfares of living rooms and kitchens.

‘Blood?’ suggested Jenny. She’d strolled over and was leaning against one of the wooden partitions that separated the displays, her paintbrush dangling. She looked openly intrigued. Her dark hair was tied back, and there were paint flecks on her forehead, but she still looked like a Pre-Raphaelite vision.

Myra knew Jenny hadn’t heard the tape yet, but, like everyone else on the course, she’d heard of it. Ripples of debate were forming within the department. The tutors were divided. Landesman had shaken his head and argued that a student couldn’t start from scratch with only a few days to go; development should be evaluated over the year. But Ruth Naylor said, even if it was the eleventh hour, initiative and boldness must be encouraged.

‘Blood?’ asked Myra.‘Why not?’ said Jenny. ‘Put a few drops of red paint

on the sheets or the floor.’‘That would be over the top,’ said Kelso. ‘I don’t

think blood is a good idea, Jen. That would make the meaning unequivocal.’

‘Oh, come on, is equivocation such a big deal? A Renaissance painter wouldn’t have had a clue what that means. It’s such a Twentieth Century concept.’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed that’s exactly the era we’re in.’

‘And high time we moved on.’‘In which direction? Forwards or backwards?’Myra allowed their aesthetic bickering to continue.

She worked, getting a splinter in one thumb and damp patches of sweat in the small of her back. Lecturers and students could argue it back and forth. For perhaps the first time in her life, she felt an originality and purpose. And be damned to what anyone else said.

In the late afternoon, she took time out to munch a ham sandwich, and study the work. She’d brought her camera in, complete with a new roll of film. Most



of her fellow students had departed to home or pub. She snapped a series of shots of her installation from different angles. The tutors encouraged them to record their progress, visually and in journals. And after all, when the exhibition was over, it would be dismantled and photographs would be all she’d have.

Lastly, as seemed appropriate, Myra put the recorder on the small wooden table beside the bed.

The last two days trickled by. It was strange, the evening before the viewing. She sat in the flickering light from the television, watching late programmes, until finally the National Anthem played. But when its dirge-like tones faded, still, she sat and gazed at the far wall. It was as though she was afraid to go to bed. No, it wasn’t that, she told herself. It was tomorrow. Dread was like a stone, weighting down her belly. Ridicule and derision; a common working class girl with ideas above her station; crass not class; pretentious nonsense.

She woke on the settee, neck and shoulder aching from the awkward angle. For a moment she was utterly disorientated. Then the sound of familiarity, the clink of bottles, as the milkman placed them on the step outside.

Spring looked like it would make an effort today. Oxford Road was brighter. A couple of sparrows squabbled over a crust, but there seemed more exuberance than need in their dispute. The pathetic fallacy, she told herself, did that apply to animals? People had shed their coats, and were strolling down the street, enjoying the sunshine. It helped to dispel some of her insecurities.

She dropped in at the chemist in St Peter’s Square, paid and thanked him, and was a hundred yards down the street, before she opened the paper folder to check the photographs of the display. She stopped, dimly conscious of an elderly lady carrying a bag of shopping. A boy on a bicycle whirred past.

Myra gazed at the photographs, bewildered. The film hadn’t developed. Each print was the

same; a succession of grey pictures. Irritated, she wondered if she’d made a mistake, overexposed it by accident. She leafed through them. All spoiled, all wasted. Then she came to the final picture.

Her first instinct was to redirect her annoyance towards the chemist. The man had given her someone else’s pictures. It was impossible she could have taken this. It had nothing to do with the exhibition. She had no idea where it had been taken or what it was. It wasn’t even in colour.

She was looking at a black and white snapshot of bleak moorland. It was daylight; the land filled by an empty illumination from the absent sky. Her attention was caught by the small figure of a woman who occupied the centre of the picture. The woman

was crouching. She wore a short coat, and fashionable outdoor boots. But her face couldn’t be properly seen; she was looking down towards the ground, and she wore a headscarf.

Myra studied the picture. Wherever this was, it had been taken in winter; that was beyond dispute. Nothing in the woman’s stance suggested it, but Myra could feel the coldness of the land, and the unseen wind soughing across it.

The chemist was apologetic but reserved. There was no possibility of a mix-up. He’d had no other films to develop that day. The blank pictures? People often didn’t use cameras properly; light crept in and ruined the exposure; could she be sure she hadn’t done that? As for the single enigmatic shot that survived, he could offer no explanation. It had developed exactly like that, in black and white, therefore, somehow, it must have been shot that way.

‘But these can’t be mine. I was in an art school for God’s sake. Inside a building.’

The chemist shook his head. ‘Maybe you took a snap a while ago and forgot about it. Or maybe someone borrowed the camera without you knowing.’

She walked out before she swore at him, the bell tinkling on the door overhead.

That evening, the exhibition hall was filled with warmth and noise. People – far more of them than she’d expected – stood or walked about as couples or in small groups. She’d had no one to invite; these were all friends and family of the other students.

There was a long table by the far wall, draped in a white cloth. A waiter had carefully placed a pyramid of glasses upon it. By the side were bottles of white and red wine. Everywhere, women in dresses, men in jackets and ties. Conversation drifting in and out as she walked through the crowd. People laughed, and beamed at one another. Myra accepted a flute of champagne. When she was a teenager she’d drank a lot, but she supposed most youngsters did. Now a drink was a treat.

Jenny came over, in garrulous mood. She’d invited her parents. They loved her work, but then that was what parents were for weren’t they? Myra smiled and agreed.

‘But who brought the little girl?’ asked Jenny suddenly.

‘Little girl?’‘I saw her a minute ago. Wandering about.’ Jenny

hesitated. ‘Must be one of the organisers’ kids. Not really appropriate, I’d say, for her to be unsupervised. Y’know, chocolately fingers on the paintings. ’

She looked across the room. A tutor, Ruth Naylor, tapped a spoon against her wine glass. The note was silvery. Everyone looked expectant. Ruth introduced Myra to the guests, explained briefly something of


thenewwriter.com 53

her display, commented on its unusualness. Myra felt everyone’s eyes upon her. The tutor finished her short speech.

Myra’s stomach fluttered. No one moved. It was as she imagined being on stage in a theatre would be. She fumbled with her sleeve to disguise her awkwardness, and went to the table by the bed. On a sudden decision, she put the photograph of moorland on the pillow. She pressed the recorder’s play button. The voices rent through the bright hall. Myra waited, unsure. The tape ended.

There was a silence of some seconds. People began to stir.

‘Absolutely remarkable.’ ‘Extraordinary.’‘Did you make it yourself, my dear?’People were crowding around, albeit in decorous

fashion. They were all looking; considering her design layout, the recorder, Myra herself.

‘I didn’t make it. I discovered it.’ She paused, uncertain what to add, and then she smiled at the expectant semi-circle. ‘It makes me sound like Columbus finding the New World, doesn’t it?’

There was a wash of laughter. ‘I’ve got to admit it; your display is distinctive.’

This was Kelso; he’d appeared beside her, smart in a double-breasted suit. ‘Very original and striking.’

‘Thank you.’‘Have you considered a London showing?’Myra only just suppressed an incredulous laugh. ‘I

actually hadn’t.’Kelso was talking to her, polite tones, calm and

agreeable. He offered to write down the name of his agent. Perhaps if Myra could get to Kensington in the next few weeks, there might be the possibility of organising something for the summer?

She nodded, a little light-headed. The room felt warm; was it less than an hour ago she’d arrived? Conversations came together and separated into laughter. Kelso went over to get another drink, promising he’d be back in a minute.

Myra looked at the people. For an instant it was strange, she could see their mouths moving, their bodies in motion, but it was as though she’d gone deaf. Their actions were played out in utter silence. Then the feeling was over and the voices crashed and broke.

Myra turned, and paused, looking down. ‘Oh, hello.’A small figure had drifted out of the crowd. This

must be the child Jenny had mentioned earlier. She was about ten or eleven, with brown hair cut short in a bob. She evidently felt no need to answer the greeting. Myra tried again.

‘Are you here with your parents?’The girl gazed at her blankly. Myra had no

children of her own, although she’d occasionally baby-sat for her sister’s offspring. She wasn’t sure how to talk to kids.

‘I mean, are your parents in this room?’The girl shook her head in that exaggerated way

children possess, hair swinging slightly. Myra looked at her more closely. She had a delicate face, the phrase

‘china doll’ springing readily to mind. She wore a pink cardigan and a plaid skirt. She was tidy, but not as though she’d been specially dressed for an occasion.

‘You came in here on your own?’‘Yes,’ said the girl, simply.She needed to have a word with Clive on the

door. He had no business letting just anyone in, particularly an unescorted child.

‘I’m afraid you can’t stay here, love,’ said Myra. ‘You’re in the wrong place.’

The college was a sizeable building. No doubt this girl’s mother was in some out-of-the-way classroom, arranging flowers or studying elementary geography. She’d brought her daughter along, and the bored girl had slipped away in search of distraction.

But the child’s next words dispelled that notion.‘Mama’s home, waiting for me.’Odd. But it was none of her affair. ‘Then best you

get yourself off then.’The girl appeared to give the matter some thought.

Her expression was solemn. Then she looked up.‘Is everything different here?’ ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘Myra?’ It was one of the tutors, Landesman,

calling decorously from across the room. ‘Myra, there’s someone would like to speak to you. A gentleman from the Manchester Evening News. A few words?’

‘Be right with you.’ She turned back to the girl. ‘Can’t I stay?’ asked the girl. Her face was all

dark eyes. ‘Well, no, you can’t.’ ‘It’s cold out there,’ said the girl, turning her

head towards the window. Evening had fallen. The colour was draining from the sky; like a painting turning into a charcoal sketch, thought Myra, then wondered briefly if all artists saw everything in aesthetic terms.

‘I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t be here. Now off you trot.’

‘Myra? We’re ready.’ She turned, and walked over to where they waited.

A young reporter, fair hair flopping over his forehead, took her to one side. ‘Would you mind if I used that Columbus quote? That was good, very sharp. So, tell me, who would you say your favourite artists are?’

Myra smiled. ‘I’m not sure I have any.’ The reporter laughed. ‘Looks like I’ll have to make

up some! Would you object?’‘Not at all.’ She was amused. He was a good looking

young man with his blond fresh- faced looks. ‘Do newspapermen often do that?’

He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Yes, but we don’t always admit to it. Now, how long have you been working on this?’

For all the excitement of the reception, she couldn’t help but wonder where the core of the interest lay. Were people intrigued by what use she’d made of the voices, or was it the mystery itself? A sort of Mary Celeste of the local art scene? If so, did it matter?



Arty Breaks

www.artybreaks.co.ukwww.artybreaks.co.uk

Take time out to join ArtyBreaks for a weekend writingretreat in EastbourneTel: 01323 727480Mobile: 07944 420 214Email: [email protected]

The reporter was scribbling in his notepad. Kelso was waiting in the background, holding two glasses, good-naturedly waiting for her to fi nish.

The reporter’s voice receded. Myra looked out of the nearest window. A breeze in the evening air was carrying a scrap of paper, twisting and scampering along the ground. Myra could see the interior of the room refl ected in the window pane, the movements of the guests behind her. But adjusting her gaze, she also saw the little girl on the road that wound away from the college. A solitary fi gure, walking.

And there was a car moving into view. A white car, an estate, maybe a Morris. It slowed down beside her. It halted. The girl stopped and went closer to the passenger window. The car and the girl; the orange glints of an overhead street lamp.

The left side door opened. The little girl was obviously talking to someone in the passenger seat, but Myra couldn’t see who. Very likely it was her mother come to pick her up. Then Myra caught the merest glimpse. A woman, for just a second or two, as she reached across to open the passenger door. The girl got in beside her. The door closed, and the car pulled away.

Myra turned back to the journalist. ‘You must be delighted?’ he asked. ‘By your success?’A rhetorical question, but she turned it over

thoughtfully. As well to be cautious in her expectations, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t enjoy this while it lasted. The fears of the night before now seemed distant and unreal. He was hanging on her answer. She smiled, and he lit her cigarette, while about her glasses clinked, and people murmured, their voices quiet and soothing.

Richard Hulse currently lives in a rambling apartment in northern England. On this side of the Atlantic his short fi ction has appeared in Scribble and Dark Tales, and in the USA his stories have been published by the literary webzines Smokelong, 3AM Magazine and Monkeybicycle. His graphic novel adaptation of Wuthering Heights is due to be published by Campfi re in 2013.

w r i t ers’ & a rt i st s y e a r bo ok 201 3I think I need an agent…

thenewwriter.com 55

If you write fi ction, having an agent is becoming almost essential. Publishers are deluged with uncommissioned proposals and rely on agents whose taste they respect to fi lter the best from

the rest. That is why many of the major publishers tell authors they will only accept submissions from agents. But even then, there are very many more novels seeking publishers (and agents) than will ever be accepted or even looked at. This leaves many novelists – however good their work – in a depressingly diffi cult situation. Having a good website, self-publishing and other self-promotional activities are ways of trying to stand out from the crowd.

‘ I T H I N K I N E E D A N A G E N T ’M A R K L E F A N U E X P L A I N S W H E N I T I S A P P R O P R I AT E F O R A N A U T H O R T O H AV E A N A G E N T.

Considered by many to be the ‘Writers’ Bible’

w r i t ers’ & a r t i st s y e a r bo ok 201 3I think I need an agent…


For narrative non-fi ction, likely to be stocked by the main booksellers, an agent may well help you to secure improved terms, but is probably not essential. A publisher can tell much about a non-fi ction work from a quick glance at a proposal, which is not the case with works of fi ction.

Few agents are interested in representing authors of scholarly, professional, reference or highly illustrated works, and generally they don’t have the specialist knowledge to do so to great effect. Agents very rarely take on poetry, memoirs or short stories; and they are particularly hesitant about taking on authors writing in their retirement when the chances of building up a lasting full-time career are reduced.

A good agent will be likely to secure better terms (notably the advance) than you can achieve on your own and thereby more than offset their commission. Successful authors say their agent saves them an enormous amount of time looking after the business side of their work. However, an indifferent agent may be of little value; likewise one without good knowledge of rights management and contracts. Be wary of agencies seeking up-front payments, for example joining, reading or editing fees, as publishers will pay little attention to recommendations from such an agency, suspecting that its main reason for representing a work is the up-front payment rather than the quality of the material itself.

Details of approximately 150 UK agencies are listed in this Yearbook. Very few literary agents take on writers other than of fi ction and narrative non-fi ction. Within these limitations, agencies represent a variety of authors. Some specialise in children’s writers and illustrators; others in fi lm, television and ‘talent’ (e.g. celebrity writers). Membership of the Association of Authors’ Agents is indicative of the literary agency’s expertise and professionalism; likewise membership of the Personal Managers’ Association

for screenwriters’ and dramatists’ agents. When asked how they came by their agent, many authors suggest that it was as much a matter of luck as anything else. The Society of Authors can give its members confi dential advice about particular agencies and look over agency agreements they are offered.

If an agency shows interest, arrange a meeting to see if you are compatible and to discuss terms before making up your mind. If you are in the fortunate position of having more than one agent seeking to represent you, or are being courted by an agent even though you are currently happy without one, get the agent to convince you that what they can bring to the party justifi es their commission. They should sell themselves to you – after all, the main skill you want from them is the ability to sell.

Most agencies give details on their websites as to how they like to be approached. The harsh reality is that many agents say they will not consider unsolicited typescripts. You will probably need to send just a synopsis and sample chapter (don’t telephone) to the agency concerned with a covering letter, retaining a copy of both. Enclose stamps for return postage. Be aware that it can be a matter of weeks before you receive a response to your proposal as agents spend most of their time representing their existing clients.

It may be reassuring to know that many members of the Society of Authors do not have agents; and (whether or not you have an agent) the Society can help by scrutinising members’ publishing and media contracts – without extra charge – and suggesting realistic improvements. Whatever impression publishers may like to give that their contracts, hallowed by years of experience and revered for their fairness, should simply be signed with gratitude, negotiation is invariably in order. Firm but reasonable bargaining, informed by a knowledge of what is achievable, undoubtedly pays off.

Mark Le Fanu was formerly General Secretary of the Society of Authors

This extract is used with kind permission from Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2013

Please see the article by agent Maggie Phillips on page 42.

You can purchase your own ‘Writers’ Bible’ – see page 62.

This extract is used with kind permission from Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2013

You can purchase your own ‘Writers’ Bible’ –

w r i t ers’ grou p t h er a p ySimon Whaley


Many writers’ groups are open and available for anyone to join. There are some though, who prefer to restrict their membership to those who have

reached a certain standard with their writing, or perhaps who write in a specific genre. Restricting membership does have its benefits (assuming you can get in!):

• It ensures that members have time to have their work critiqued. A group with 20 members won’t have time to read everyone’s 2000-word short story and offer constructive criticism in a two-hour meeting. Smaller groups can manage their time more efficiently, which gives everyone a chance to give and receive feedback on work read out.

• If every member of the group is writing to a similar standard, they aren’t devoting a lot of time bringing a newer member up to their standard. Yes, a writers’ group is an opportunity to grow and develop, but if there’s a wide range of abilities that can impact on how well each member develops. The newer members may find themselves gaining a lot from other members, but older members may not be getting the feedback they need from newer

members. Having everyone at a similar level means there’s an opportunity for everyone to develop.

• A group that specialises in a particular genre will, over time, build up knowledge and skills in that genre. Being focussed like this can help a writer’s development.

However, having an application process has its drawbacks. It can prevent fresh blood from joining the group, which means existing members may become insular. Writers should expose themselves to different styles of writing, and new members can help with this. Also, limiting membership can create a waiting list of members who’ve been ‘approved’. Some might not feel comfortable about filling a dead member’s shoes. Ironically, in the time between being approved and being able to join a group, the new member may have developed so much that the new group is no longer suitable!

It doesn’t matter whether a group is open or closed to new members. What’s important is whether it helps you as a writer. If you think it might help then try joining. But if you find you’re not getting anything from the group, it doesn’t matter how elitist it is, you have only one course of action: find a better group!

Oliver Fletcher, from Inverness, raises an interesting question. ‘There’s a writers’ circle I’d like to join, but when I made enquiries they advised me there was an application process, which requires me to send examples of any published work, or a selection of my five best written pieces. If they like what they read they’ll invite me to join. This is elitist and unfair! I thought writers’ groups were supposed to be accessible.’

Is elitism fair?

If you have a writers’ group query that you’d like answered, please email Simon at [email protected] or write to him c/o TNW. If requested, queries will not be attributed to specific groups or members, to prevent any unnecessary bloodshed!

B Y s i m o n w h a l e Y

w r i t e r s’ g r o u p t h e r a p Y

i w i sh i ’d w r i t t en t h at !Sense and Sensibility


I wish I’d written Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – and not just because of the extensive royalties! Originally published in 1811 under the pseudonym of ‘A Lady’ this was the first of her

novels to be published. I have enjoyed most of her work especially Pride and Prejudice so why this one?

“Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.”

Marianne represents the sensual life of inflamed passions and opinions. Her more sensible sister Elinor suffers from being too reticent and not exploring fully her own feelings and thoughts – much to her own detriment within the book.

“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”

A relationship, in my opinion, can only be based on friendly argument and lively discourse but for Elinor her reserved nature hinders her true destiny and risks her own happiness. In my opinion Marianne is a little ‘affected’ and more than a little irritating but if I were to meet her half-way, or meet someone similar in my life, then I should take from her an openness and clarity of feeling – qualities which are largely absent from my own personality.

As for the style of writing no detailed descriptions of exteriors are given for what concerns Austen is the interior life of thoughts and feelings and the conflict raging between social restraint and impulsiveness, reason versus passion. In witty dialogue and memorable characters this battle plays out amongst its pages only to end in a delightful synthesis although, perhaps, a modern reader may be forgiven for having doubts over the future success of the relationship between Marianne and Colonel Brandon. For some critics Austen’s view of the universe is a narrow one but what greater expanse can there be than that covered by what we actually feel and how we interact, often clumsily, with one another. The numerous television and film versions normally fail to capture her satirical ‘voice’ which is so prevalent in her writing and which makes her literature so enjoyable. The cinematic work is easy to dismiss as ‘costume drama’ but she’s so much better than that. Who wouldn’t wish to write so eloquently about the vagaries of human nature?

Response to Readers’ Challenge in TNW113

B Y PA U L F O X

See page 7 for the next Readers’ Challenge

I wish I’d written that!

“

m ee t t h e pu bl i sh erHead of Zeus

thenewwriter.com 59

We are Head of Zeus, a brand new publishing house dedicated to new authors and great storytelling.

On 3 January 2012, from a tiny attic on Monmouth Street, the founders Anthony, Nic and Laura , opened Head of Zeus for business.

� We love the printed book – the heft of a hardback, the feel of good paper, fl oor-to-ceiling bookshelves – and will never abandon them… but the ebook offers something else.

Great stories don't date, as long as there are people to read them, they remain eternally new. A good story transcends the words with which it is written, and so how unkind to bind it such physical mundanities as book shop shelf space and month-long sale cycles. Long after the hardback and paperback have disappeared, the E, on the limitless shelves of cyberspace, endures.

Word of mouth has always been a key ingredient in making a bestseller, but it has never been as quick. Now a good book can catch on overnight, without being stacked high in supermarkets, before it wins a prestigious literary award, and without being a Richard & Judy pick. So, ebooks offer both instant results and immortality: truly E shall be fi rst and last!

This belief underpins everything we do at HoZ. The E-revolution has allowed us to publish in new ways, and

forge new connections with our authors and with our audience and with that in mind, it could not be a more exciting time to launch a brand new publishing house.Nic Cheetham, Deputy MD and Digital Publisher

� Sometimes you wake up at night full of dread, wondering why anyone would start a new publishing house in a crowded market with a full blown recession just around the corner. But if a good book arrives on your desk in the morning, you remember why. The list is what counts, and we have much to be grateful for on that score.Anthony Cheetham, CEO

� I read for escapism and I love a good cry, so I especially like novels that come with a devastating tragedy and/or a blissfully happy ending. But that's not crucial. For me, a great story can be about anything or set anywhere, so long as it has characters you can identify with, a world you can lose yourself in and a plot that keeps you turning the pages till midnight. The great mistake made by some fi rst authors is to begin with a Big Idea and then shoehorn in the story... If you want your readers to engage, the story must always come fi rst.Laura Palmer, Fiction Publisher

M E E T T H E P U B L I S H E RIn the world of publishing Anthony Cheetham is something of a legend for the number of publishing houses and imprints he has founded or been closely involved in. Until recently the list read Abacus, Century, Macdonald Futura, Orion, Quercus and Corvus.

Head of Zeus is his latest start up and his enthusiasm– and that of his team – shines undimmed.

fol l ow i ng obsessionsVanessa Gebbie


B Y VA N E S S A G E B B I E

coped. Or not. I wanted to walk through a section of the old workings that had been made safe for visitors (hard hats, low ceilings, dark...). But most of all, I wanted to walk along the cliff to Levant, the next mine, where there was once a machine that had fascinated me for ages. The man engine. For those who are interested, the man engine was a rudimentary lift mechanism powered by a beam engine up top, a machine for taking miners down into the earth. In 1919 the Levant man engine failed, causing the deaths of over 30 miners – and I wanted to fi nd out as much as I could.

Why? Ah, that’s the million-dollar question. I had no idea. All I know is, this was 2004, I hadn’t been writing for long, and for some reason I just wanted to fi nd out.

Imagine my joy when, travelling in 2005 to a writers’ retreat in West Cork, Ireland, I discovered that there was a disused copper mine at Allihies, within a few miles. And the Cornish miners had been brought in to install guess what – a man engine. The machine was following me about – keeping the obsession alive. Suffi ce it to say I returned to that retreat each year, and still do – and each year I drive across and visit the mine, climb to the place called the Mountain Mine, and sit and write high up, overlooking Allihies and the sea.

In 2008 ish I wrote a short story about a young

After the Man Booker celebrations this year I was fascinated to read an interview with Hilary Mantel in which she refers to her relationship with her characters as ‘an

obsession’. That got me thinking – yes, we writers do have our obsessions, and if we follow them (and this is the key…) even if we don’t know why, good things can happen.

We were on holiday a good few summers ago, in Cornwall. 2004, actually. Husband, young teenage son. It was a glorious day, a day made for the beach, the surf, maybe a walk on a breezy headland. But no.

“Can you drop me at a tin mine?” I asked. “You guys have a day on the beach, pick me up afterwards. There’s a great mine museum at Geevor.”

It’s not that I don’t like beaches, especially Cornish ones, a dollop of Cornish ice-cream after a swim, a good book in the shelter of the sand dunes... perfect. But there was this tin mine to visit, and given the choice, I wanted to go there. On my own. I didn’t want husband or son trailing behind moaning, “Why are we here? What are you so interested in?”

It sounded rather lame to say actually, I wanted to fi nd out what it was like underground in a tin mine. I wanted to explore the museum, discover how the men and women who worked there for centuries had

Following your obsessions

Jeremy Banning with Caroline Davies, Tania

Hershman, and Zoe King, Chair of the Soc

of Women Writers and Journalists.

(AND HOW IMPORTANT THEY ARE TO YOUR WRITING…)

fol l ow i ng obsessionsVanessa Gebbie

thenewwriter.com 61

soldier who returns from the trenches and is caught up in the Levant man engine disaster. It took a long time to get right – one of the most important parts of the story was the actual collapse, descriptions of what happened underground, the machine, the men. In my head I was back in the tunnels at Geevor. I sent it to The Fish Prize under the title ‘The return of the baker Edwin Tregear’. It came second. Yippee! But that wasn’t the end of the obsession.

Watch me as I sit at the Mountain Mine in Allihies one afternoon in January 2009, writing a scene from the novel that would be called The Coward’s Tale, but which, at that point, had the working title The Man Engine. Watch – I’m getting up, taking off my shoes, and walking down the now stony, now grassy path to where my car is parked, in bare feet. What am I doing?! Well, that scene is set on a mountainside, after a mining accident deep underground. A boy has escaped the accident with his life, and is walking barefoot on the mountain he has known and loved all his life. To walk it was to know it. As they say, ‘Write what you know.’

At the heart of The Coward’s Tale is the collapse of that coal mine. It is part of the story, and it is also a metaphor for any incident which a community needs to recover from. OK, here it is not a tin mine – my family comes from south Wales, the novel is set there, and there aren’t any tin mines in south Wales. Nor is there any evidence I can fi nd that they used man engines. However – the movement of the machine informed the structure of the novel, is mirrored in the regular and constant movement between present and past. More importantly, it also worked as a guiding metaphor for the themes of the story – men descending into darkness, singly, and returning into the light, changed. As I reluctantly, but appropriately, changed the title before sending in the manuscript.

It is a salutary thought that if I had not followed my obsession way back when, perhaps that novel would not have been written at all. Or the Fish-prizewinning short story. Talking of which… did I mention that the main character is a young soldier…?

See, another obsession, for a long time now, has been certain actions in the Great War. I suppose it is normal to be interested, especially if one is brought up by a father who fought and was decorated in WWII. But when I had the fi rst tranche of advance for The Coward’ s Tale from Bloomsbury, I remember thinking, selfi shly maybe, No-one else is going to get their mitts on this. It’s mine. Now, what do I really, really want to spend it on?

I’d already visited the Great War battlefi elds more than once, in various groups. We’d done the usual thing, visiting the better-known places, hearing about the better-known people and their exploits. For some reason, I decided to fi nd a military historian who would research one little-known battalion and accompany me on a one-to-one trip following in their footsteps. I found a brilliant guy called Jeremy Banning (www.jeremybanning.com) and in early 2011

we went for fi ve days to the Somme and Ypres. I was able to walk the exact roads along which they had marched to the front, to walk the battlefi elds where they fought, following their progress. And I was able to stay as long as I liked, drinking it all in. No ‘back on the coach in twenty minutes...’ And I was able to pay my respects to ‘my boys’ in the beautiful cemeteries that pepper the landscape.

Two years on, and that obsession is informing my writing in the form of poetry, but also another novel. Unfi nished as yet and only partly set during the Great War, I have no idea where it is going, but it is interesting fi nding out! That trip was too good to keep to myself, so last October, I put together a small group of interested writers and Jeremy Banning led us back to the Somme. Some unforgettable visits and stories later, and poetry, prose, fi ction and non-fi ction fl owed. Such a great trip that it is becoming an annual event, and we are off again this October.

One of the writers on the last trip was poet Caroline Davies. Her own obsession for the last few years has been another war, WWII. Her grandfather served in the Merchant Navy on the Malta convoys. She followed her fascination, researching, and writing. Suffi ce it to say that the result, Caroline’s fi rst poetry collection, ‘Convoy’ will be published in May, by Cinnamon Press. When I asked for permission to mention her here, she said, “What writer isn’t obsessed…?”

I remember non-writing friends saying some years back, “Why are you writing about a coal mine? Why not write about this, or that, or the other…?” and now I’m getting the same sort of comment – “Why on earth write about dark subjects like the Great War? It’s all been said. Do something else…” but you see, dear friends, we do what we must. For some reason a small community with a coal mine at its heart wanted to be written about. Now, a little-known group of ordinary blokes in a war that began almost a century ago want to be written. And who am I to stop them?

I do think that we should trust our obsessions, in this context. We must trust our own processes. That means trusting that we don’t need to know why. The best writing usually comes from somewhere we don’t quite understand.

Vanessa Gebbie is author of the novel The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury) and two collections of short fi ction: Words from a Glass Bubble and Storm Warning (both Salt Modern Fiction). She teaches widely and is contributing editor of the text book Short Circuit, guide to the art of the short story (Salt). She was awarded the 2012 Troubadour International Poetry prize and her fi rst poetry pamphlet is forthcoming from Pighog Press. Vanessa is Welsh and lives in East Sussex.

Vanessa Gebbie is author of the novel

Vanessa is Welsh and lives in East Sussex.

Also available from the shop at guisegifts.com or call 01962 620320 between 9am and 5pm

Always number one on our list of books for writers is the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. You can buy the 2013 edition from us. There’s an extract from it on page 55.

The other three titles have been recommended to us by Merric Davidson and are all available to purchase from us.

B O O K S F O R W R I T E R S

SEEPAGE 64

TO ORDER

£9.99

£18.99

£12.00

£8.99

personal subscriptionfor The New Writer

for newbooks

Your first name

Surname

Address

Postcode

Email (optional)

Telephone (optional)

GiFt subscriptionfor The New Writer

for newbooks

Their first name

Surname

Address

Postcode

Your dedication

I enclose a cheque payable to The New Writer

I wish to pay by Visa/Mastercard/Debit Card/Maestro (delete as applicable)

Name on card

Expiry Date / Security code

Choose 2 CoMPLeTeLY FRee books FRoM The LisT beLow – PLease indiCaTe PReFeRenCes 1, 2, 3 eTC

Defending Jacob by William Landay I really enjoyed this cracking thriller… makes you think about how much any parent can really know their child, and about the limitations of the legal system. Recommended. Lindsay Healy – Cambridgeshire HHHHH

Gift of Time by Rory MacLean As with all too many families we have had to live through the death of a relative through cancer… I only wish that I had been able to read [this book] when I needed it. It is, as it says on the cover, ‘a wonderful book.’ Michael Cox – Southport HHHH

The Ambassador’s Daughter by Pam Jenoff … this novel is far, far more than a love story. I now will be seeking out other books by Pam Jenoff. Final verdict: Enthralling! Helena May – Aldershot HHHHH

Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch … the third in Aaronovitch's 'Rivers of London' series – the best recommendation I can give is that as soon as I'd finished it, I rushed off and bought the first two. Andy Key – Winchester HHHHH

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner [this] original work is an outstanding addition to the Young Adult genre, which had me glued to the page for hours reading in a feverish frenzy. Lucinda Fountain – Surrey HHHHH

(Full reviews published on newbooksmag.com)

Subscriptionsthenewwriter.com/subscribe or guisegifts.com

01962 620320

The New Writer, 4 Froxfield Close, Winchester SO22 6JW

su bsc r i p t ions & of f ers

thenewwriter.com 63

subscription ratesThe New Writer 6 issue subscriptionUK £30.00EUROPE £50.00REST OF WORLD £60.00

newbooks 6 issue subscription SPECIAL OFFER – includes 2 COMPLETELY FREE BOOKS – choose from the list (below)UK £22.50EUROPE £33.50REST OF WORLD £44.50

total of subscriptions

total (brought forward) from ‘Treats’ overleaf

GranD total

Treats for writerssu bsc r i p t ions & of f ers

64 twitter.com/thenewwritermag|facebook.com/TheNewWriterMagazine

penguin mugs £8.95 each – see page 28

The Invisible Man (MInv)

My Man Jeeves (MJee)

The Great Gatsby (MGat)

Wuthering Heights (MWut)

Jane Eyre (MJan)

The Big Sleep (MBig)

Post & packing for 1 mug p&p £1.95

FREE p&p for 2 or more mugs

instead of a card – see page 36

In Memoriam (PMem) – £5.95

Ten Poems about Bicycles (PBic) – £4.95

Twelve Poems about Birds (PBir) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Cats (PCat) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Dogs (PDog) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Fathers (PFat) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Gardens (PGar) – £4.95

Ten Poems about London (PLon) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Love (PLov) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Mothers (PMot) – £4.95

Ten Pre-Raphaelite Poems (PPre) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Puddings (PPud) – £4.95

Thirteen Poems of Revenge (PRev) – £4.95

Ten Poems by The Romantics (PRom) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Sheep (PShe) – £4.95

Ten Poems about Tea (PTea) – £4.95

Moleskine – see pages 13

Large Ruled Notebook (MOl) – £13.50

Pocket Ruled Notebook (MOp) – £9.99

Ruled Cahier Large (*3) (MO3l) – £8.99

Ruled Cahier Pocket (*3) (MO3p) – £5.99

total of items in this column (Carry forward to right column)

instead of a cardinstead of a card

sarah Hough Notebooks £2.00 each – see pages 8/9

skinny notebooks

Allium Fernandez (SKali)

Agapanthus Breeze (SKaga)

Arabian Night (SKara)

Berry Bright (SKber)

Cupcake Crazy (SKcup)

Going Dutch (SKtul)

Joli (SKyac)

Papillon (SKbut)

Roses are Red (SKros)

Suzy’s Meadow (SKgra)

Sweet Lavender (SKlav)

T-4-2! (SKtea)

books about writing – see pages 62

Write to be Published – £8.99

Moving On: Short Story to Novel – £9.99

Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2013– £18.99

The Writers’ Treasury of Ideas– £12.00

Writing maps £4.00 each – see back cover

Writing Art (WMA)

The Café Writing Map (WMCa)

The Character Map (WMCh)

City of Inspiration (WMCi)

Write Around the House (WMH)

My Writing Life (WMLi)

Writing the Love (WMLo)

Writing People (WMP)

Writing Things (WMT)

total of items in this column

total of items from left column (carried forward)

GranD total (this page)(Carry over to previous page)

N E W

thenewwriter.com 65

The 33rd Winchester Writers’ Conference, Festival and Bookfair 21-25 June, 2013The University of Winchester With In-depth Workshops 24-25 June 2013 Enjoy Lord Julian Fellowes’ Plenary Address, Jasper Fforde’s workshop and a feast of 12 Masters’ Courses, 14 Workshops, 55 Lectures and 500 One-to-One appointments designed to help you harness your creative ideas and develop your professional practice. You will be guided by over 60 leading novelists, poets, playwrights, commissioning editors, literary agents and industry specialists. Weekend accommodation and meals are available on the University of Winchester’s campus as part of the Conference package.

For more information, visit our website www.writersconference.co.uk or contact Barbara Large MBE, Winchester Writers’ Conference, University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire SO22 4NR Tel: 01962 827238 email: [email protected]

Lord Julian Fellowes: Author, broadcaster, gardener, actor, novelist, film director, Oscar winner and screenwriter, including Downton Abbey.

Jasper Fforde Novelist, author of the Thursday Next series.

Château Ventenac is delighted to announce new creative writing and poetry courses as well as our popular retreat weeks. Booking now for 2012.Tutors include: Sean O’Brien, Pascale Petit, Patricia Duncker, Tamar Yoseloff, Maurice Riordan, Penny Shuttle, Patrick Gale, Sarah Duncan, Salley Vickers, Tiffany Murray, Jo Bell, Chrysse Morrison and Maria McCann.

Inspiring location, wonderful views, great food. We look after you whilst you relax and write.

www.chateauventenac.com/[email protected]+44 (0)7773 206344

Poetry & Writing Courses in FranCe

G E T W R I T I N G

In every issue of The New Writer we aim to have a number of writing opportunities for our readers. These will vary from exercises for you to try alone to articles which we would like to receive from you. There will also be competitions, showcase opportunities, reports and more.

See below for an index of the opportunities in this issue

Choc Lit Short story competition – page 2

The New Writer Prose & Poetry Prizes – page 6Entries are being accepted now until 30 November.

Writers’ Prompt – page 29Respond to the photograph in whatever way you wish.

Writing Together, Writing Alone – page 40Try the exercise for yourself and send us the result.

Writers’ Bookshelf – page 47Send us a book review of your favourite writing guide.

Letters pageTell us what you think of the new look magazine.

Writers’ Group Profile – tell us about your group, where and how often you meet, how you started and what keeps you going. Don’t forget to include a photograph and do send us a writing exercise that we can all try.

Competitions have their own submission guidelines and deadlines; for all other writing opportunities please send us your copy by 4 June 2013. As always we prefer email submissions. Please send to [email protected] unless otherwise stated.

f i v e bo ok sKatie Fforde


K I NG A RT H U R A N D H IS K N IGH T S (Numerous editions available)My mother used to read this to me when I was very little. It was really a bit too old for me but I fell in love with the romance of it all even at fi ve years old. It was one of those books that had very few colour plates and I used to search through it looking for them. They were very pre-Raphaelite. I used to make the other children in the square gardens (we lived in London) act out the parts. I was always the lead knight (I don’t remember Guinevere ever having a role!).

F R I DAY ’S C H I L D by Georgette Heyer (Arrow £7.99)This was the fi rst of her books that I read, although again, I was a bit young and couldn’t understand all the words. This meant I could re read them loads of times. I think my writing style developed from reading her books so avidly. It was suggested I was a fan by someone after I had written my fi rst book. As I write contemporary novels this was a bit of a surprise but I thought about it and realised it was true.

T O W R I T E R S W I T H L OV Eby Mary Wibberly (Out of Print)This book appeared at just the right time for me. I had started trying to write Mills and Boon novels and it tells you how to do it. Actually the tips in it apply to most sorts of writing as far as I can remember. It also told me about The Romantic Novelists Association which is such a big part of my writing (and social!) life. It also told me about the Writers’ Conference at Swanwick. I had the best week of my life there when I fi rst went. I have friends I met there still and it was years ago.

RO GE T ’S T H E SAU RUS by Peter Mark Roget (Numerous editions available)This was part of the ‘writer’s kit’ my mother gave me the Christmas before I started writing. I had been muttering about it for a while and she obviously decided it was time I shut up or put up. There was a dictionary, paper, pens, Tippex as well but it is the thesaurus that most reminds me of that present. I have since bought bigger dictionaries but I still have the original thesaurus although it is very tatty now.

T H E A L BAT RO SS B O OK OF V E R SE by Louis Untermeyer (ed.) (Out of Print)This was a school prize and I took it home and read it, more or less cover to cover. It has some wonderful poems including St Agnes Eve by Keats, which has to be the most erotic piece of writing on an O level syllabus! I’m always comforted when I pick up this favourite. It has poems from every era and if every I’m called upon to choose a poem – or even read one – this is always the book I end up choosing one from.

were very pre-Raphaelite. I used to make the other

F R I DAY ’S C H I L D by Georgette Heyer (Arrow £7.99)This was the fi rst of her books that I read, although

A French Affair by Katie Fforde is published by Century priced £16.99

In the fi rst of this regular feature author Katie Fforde tells us about fi ve books that helped to form her as a writer, starting with one from childhood and including one writers’ ‘how-to’ book.

BOOKS

newbooks is the magazine and website for readers and reading groups with the unique feature that you can claim FREE the books that we feature (all we ask is you cover our p&p costs).

We’ll help you fi nd the books and authors you don’t even know about yet but will want to read. So in the past that has been the debuts of Jodi Picoult, Alexander McCall Smith and Salley Vickers.

Recently it’s included The One Hundred Year Old Man and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

Big interviews with authors new and established.Reviews by real readers like you who tell it like it is. Pieces about and by a real cross-section of authors.

Y O U R S I S T E R M A G A Z I N E T O T H E N E W W R I T E R

I am Moth, a girl from the poorest part of Manhattan, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.Mama sold me the summer I turned twelve.

An entrancing story of survival and redemption in 19th century New York.

OUT NOW IN ORION PAPERBACK Read an extract: www.orionbooks.co.ukOUT NOW IN ORION PAPERBACK

OVER 40NEW BOOKS REVIEWED INSIDE

CATHY KELLY

Sept

embe

r/O

ctob

er 2

012

Issu

e 71

| £3

.00

FREE BOOKS EVERY ISSUE

SEE PAGE 43

THE MAGAZINE FOR READERS AND READING GROUPS

NEWBOOKSMAG.COM

JEFFREY ARCHERSUSAN HILL RACHEL ALLEN

Million-seller and mentor to many

t h e big i n t erv i e w

Mark BillinghamSerial thriller

a l i fe’s wor k

MC Beaton

OUR FEATUREDBOOKS THIS ISSUE

‘When I am

dead, I hope it may be said: “H

is sins were scarlet, but his books w

ere read”.’ Hilaire Belloc

September/O

ctober 2012 | Issue 71

PLUS

Where there’s a crime, there’s a place

• Features exclusive interviews, extracts, competitions and breaking news from today’s leading authors – including

Ian Rankin, Denise Mina and Harlan Coben.

The new online community where you can discover, discuss and download some of the world’s greatest vintage crime novels.

Visit www.themurderroom.com to discover and re-discover out-of-print or hard-to-find crime classics.

Anthony Boucher

James M. Cain

James Hadley Chase

Peter Cheyney

Arthur Conan Doyle

J.J. Connington

John Dickson Carr

Stanley Ellin

Joan Fleming

Joe Gores

George V. Higgins

Geoffrey Household

P.M. Hubbard

Bill James

M.M. Kaye

Ronald Knox

Ross Macdonald

Donald Mackenzie

Laurence Meynell

Margaret Millar

Margaret Murphy

Anthony Price

Maurice Procter

Donald Thomas

Jim Thompson

Michael Underwood

The Murder Room Ad 3.indd 1 17/10/2012 17:48


Rachel Joyce

Janu

ary/

Febr

uary

201

3Is

sue

73 |

£3.0

0


SEE PAGE 59


NEWBOOKSMAG.COM

LYNN SHEPHERDPAM JENOFF DENISE MINA

And our Book of the Year winner is…


Ben Aaronovitch

The class of 2013The best of the debuts


Rachel Joyce

‘A bookstore is one of the few

pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.’ Jerry Seinfeld

January/February 2013 | Issue 73

PLUSThe Flavia De Luce novels

Welcome to Bishop’s Lacey-A murder every country mile

Out now from Orion Publishing Read extracts at www.orionbooks.co.uk


NaughtieNaughtieNaughtieJamesJamesJamesNaughtieNaughtieNaughtieJamesNaughtieNaughtieNaughtieJamesNaughtieNaughtieNaughtieJamesNaughtieNaughtieNaughtie

Mar

ch/A

pril

2013

Issu

e 74

| £3

.00


SEE PAGE 43


NEWBOOKSMAG.COM

ALAN BRADLEYDAISY WAUGH JENNIE ROONEY




lan King

March/A

pril 2013 | Issue 74

NaughtieNaughtieNaughtieNaughtieNaughtieNaughtiePLUS

NaughtieNaughtieNaughtie


Deborah Moggach

Jodie PicoultTracks of my years

7717

4238

4000

9

08>

Coming up watch Coming up watch Coming up watch Coming up watch out for Ketchup Clouds and The Spinning Heart.Spinning Heart.Spinning Heart

Interested? See page 63 to order a single copy or take out a SPECIAL OFFER SUBSCRIPTION for The New Writer readers.

writing prompt from The Character Map

writing prompt from City of Inspiration Writing Map

writing prompt from Café Writing Map writing prompt from My Writing Life Writing Map

writing prompt from Writing Things Writing Map

writing prompt from Write Around the House Writing Map

Writing Maps are a portable and inspiring guide through the wonders and perils of writing fiction and memoir. Each illustrated map is an A3 poster that folds down to postcard size, and contains 12 thought-provoking writing exercises to make sure you have writerly fun wherever you are and in ways that will surprise you.

www.writingmaps.com

WRITING MAPS:WRITING PROMPTS IN YOUR POCKET

SEE p64TO ORDER

£4 EACH

PORTABLE PRACTICAL INSPIRING NO MORE WRITER’S BLOCK

the new writer issue 114

Documents