To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.
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I think the short story is quite a brutal form for the writer to operate in. As human beings we deplore cognitive dissonance and we want to see all loose ends tied up, especially if we have invested time in reading a piece of work. But writers I know take a different view of the short story…
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I was recently asked to judge a short story competition for a group of writers in York. Before handing out the prizes I was asked to say a little about ‘what made a short story.’ It was a question that got me thinking, and I thought I would set down my thoughts on the subject for this blog.
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Have you ever been turned off a book by a research flaw or too much information?
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I got into a debate recently with a writer who is far more seasoned than me. Internationally published, widely translated and published over two decades, he pondered out loud why he still wrote. ‘I’m always trying to put across a message,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘There’s a question I want to answer, and the novel is my way of addressing it.’
So- I’m about to write the story, lifting a few lines from the synopsis as a brief of what I want to get written that day. But often at this point I get stuck. How can I go from my detailed plan of a story, to actually writing the story itself?
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So, how important is the prestige, in the publishing business? If it is not just your sales that dictate the opportunities you get as a writer, is it the prestige of your words? Your words are worth the world. It’s just that some people, in that world, won’t tell you that.
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I was recently asked by a fellow writer about how I have used my writers journals to develop novels I’ve worked on. I didn’t realise at the time what a personal question this is, as the writers journal is, I suppose, a fairly intimate space in which the internal furniture of the imagination is carefully crafted, ready to be supplanted into a fictional work. Often in dialogue with students of the OCA I stress the usefulness of the journal in helping to put flesh onto the bones of their writing, and here I thought I could perhaps elucidate my thoughts on the matter a little more.
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In my last blog post I detailed my bumpy, eye-opening and occasionally turbulent route to publication, and how having found a publisher I built a relationship with them. Strangely enough, people rarely seem to ask about finding a publisher, and more often they enquire about the process of finding an agent, a subject I thought I would turn to here.
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From time to time I get the opportunity to teach Creative Writing, and the students always seem to enjoy most the class on ‘How I Got Published’. Having just had my third novel published in February I thought it might perhaps be a good idea for me to set my experience of getting published down in writing. My negotiations with agents, in particular, offered me an insight I am particularly glad I now have.
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In 2012 I embarked on a three year journey to research my third novel, which I’d entitled ‘How I Left The National Grid’. I didn’t know it would be a three year journey! They say that a piece of art is never finished, only abandoned. My journey took three years not to end, but to abandon.
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