The Creative Cafe Project

My story 'Jazz Cafe' is on the menu at the Cafe Lit Creative Cafe Project site today as a Mango Smoothie.  If you love scribbling at cafe tables with a cappuccino on the side, and haven't found the Cafe Lit site yet, please check it out - there's some great work and some very good stuff for writers.

The Ups and the Downs of a Writer's Life

This is proving a weird week, with lots of ups and downs. Sunday saw the end of ‘il gran caldo’, with thunderstorms and 36 hours of much needed torrential rain. The landscape looks greener and the air is cooler, particularly at night.

On the work front, life seems to go according to this graph borrowed from Karen Ball on A.B.B.A.   After a really difficult period, suddenly everyone wants me! I’ve had two approaches with exciting non-fiction projects I can’t say much about yet, and an offer has been made to my agent for a Japanese edition of Katherine Mansfield. I googled her name in Japanese and this is what appeared.

Neil and I have also, after a lot of effort, internet bother and swearing in two different languages (Italian expletives now quite fluent) published a small collection of short stories on Amazon Kindle as a Kindle Single. THREE is a collection of 3 stories, one rather longer story (called Three) previously unpublished and two other stories published in anthologies and read on BBC Radio 4.

The hardest part of the exercise was getting it onto Smashwords.com, which makes E-books available to Sony e-readers, i-pads, Nooks, phone apps and several other formats. Their submission criteria and formatting are very tricky indeed, despite the downloadable handbook. Just one code or character in the wrong place and the whole thing goes crazy. But we managed to put Three up there and my other e-title A Passionate Sisterhood.

I’ve been blogging about the sheer hell of it over on what used to be the Kindle authors blog site. This has been forced, by Amazon, to change its name as an infringement of their copyright. You’d think they would welcome the publicity, but no. In addition their legal department has requested us to remove all mention of kindling or kindled in our past web posts for the same reason.  The Link will only work until Friday, and we have only a few days to decide how to rename ourselves.

Apparently no one, anywhere (not even in the paragraph above) can talk about kindling or being kindled except with reference to flames or small sticks of wood, without a writ appearing through the mail box. Despite both words being in the English dictionary and some powerful precedents - googled, googling -hoovered - hoovering - Have amazon never heard of the phrase ‘household name’? But, since they’re the only e-retailer offering 70% royalties on books, they have us by the proverbial short and curlies!

Save the Short Story

Today I've been in my new house a week and it's beginning to feel more like home.   There are pictures on the walls and I've managed to organise the kitchen cupboards.  Outside I've pruned and watered the rosemary bush which was almost dead from neglect.
The weather has been very unseasonal for Italy in the second half of July - rain almost every day, cloudy and grey with a strong, cool wind blowing.  I'm writing this on the terrace wrapped in a shawl on what would normally be a balmy evening.  The Mediterranean is very rough, as we found on an excursion to explore a new pier that's been constructed at Marina di Pietrasanta.   Standing in the sea beside it is a bronze cloaked figure staring back at the mountains.  On such a wild, dark day it felt rather melancholy.  There was no plaque to say who the artist was, or who it is intended to be.   The biggest waves were washing right up to the hem of the bronze robes,  and the beach  - usually crammed with tourists  - was deserted.

I'm not doing much writing yet - I'm not settled enough and my mind keeps wandering off to write shopping lists or wonder how to decipher the impenetrable communication from Italia Telecom written in a form of Italian previous unknown to me and demanding 220 euros with no indication of how or where to pay!

More depressing news has filtered through from the world of books and writing.   The BBC have decided to axe their daily short story slot  - one of the only decent markets for the genre left to us.  Not only that, it's such a good training ground for budding authors.   Writing a short story for radio is such good practice for writing prose fiction - lucid, with a clear story line and strong voices.   It's one of the ways I started out and I've discovered many a favourite author that way and gone on to read their novels.  These cuts are all down to money and it makes me feel even more angry about the mess the bankers have left us in.

The Society of Authors has initiated a petition which I've gladly signed. 

http://www.ipetitions.com/peti​tion/noshortstorycuts/

 

New Developments in Digital Publishing

There's a very interesting post on the Writers Beware blog at the moment about the sudden cut-throat competition that's arisen between agents and publishers about putting backlists out again either as Print On Demand or as E-books.  Most publishers have given up keeping any but their most famous authors in traditional print, and they've been very slow to realise the potential of POD and E-books.     Catherine Cookson's agent has set up her own publishing imprint to publish CC's backlist, by-passing Random House (who are of course furious!).
And, of course, there's nothing to stop an author doing the same once their book is out of print and they've got their rights back.  A lot of writers that I know are doing just that.  POD is very cheap and putting out an E-book either as a PDF or on Kindle is free.  Neil has already re-published one of my Virago paperbacks 'A Passionate Sisterhood' and is planning to publish my Christina Rossetti biography next year.
There is also a new digital publisher - Shortfire Press - who are E-publishing short stories,  submission guidelines here, and Amazon have started  Kindle Singles - where you can sell your own short stories individually for a small sum of money (99p seems usual).   I'm certainly going to be doing that. 
Writers need Readers and the Internet makes it possible to find them without the traditional gate-keepers of publisher and agent.  It's unsettling for authors, but makes for an exciting future.   Where is it all heading?  Listen to this radio interview with Seth Godin - it's both frightening and optimistic.  Things are changing and writers need to be prepared.

A Week at Words by the Water

It’s been a busy week at the Lit Fest as well as trying to keep up with my university job and daily life.

I love the Words by the Water event, not just because of the beautiful location, but also because there’s always a friendly atmosphere and you never know who you might bump into over lunch in the Green Room. This year one was likely to trip over Lesley Garrett, Melvyn Bragg, Maureen Lipman, Claire Tomalin, and a host of television journalists and philosophers - including A.C. Grayling. Several of the promised journalists were missing, due to the situation in Libya, but replacements were being ordered.

I was booked to give a couple of creative writing sessions in the Sky Arts Den, which was fun, though there isn’t much you can do in 45 minutes. I hoped just to give people a taste of writing and perhaps get them started on something they might want to finish later.

One of the nice things about the festival is getting a pass to other authors’ events. I went to listen to Cate Haste talk about her new book on Sheila Fell - a painter from Cumbria who was one of the youngest artists (and one of the few women) to be admitted to the Royal Academy. She was incredibly beautiful, a protege of L.S. Lowry, and  died tragically at a very young age. It was a fantastic talk with good images.  Of course I'm slightly biased  -  Sheila Fell was an Old Girl from  my school and she spent her short life painting the landscape I love. 



You can’t go to everything though - there just isn’t time. Apparently Rachel Hewitt was fascinating on the history of the Ordnance Survey map, and I would have loved to hear poet Jackie Kay talk about her Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter.

I did manage to go to a forum on the short story. A new small press called Nightjar is bringing out Chapbooks of limited edition short stories and there seems to be a general revival of interest in the short story form - it was all very encouraging. The editor prints a maximum run of 2-300 and sells them via the internet and a few sympathetic independent bookshops. He aims to break even after printing and editing costs. There’s no money in the short story, which is presumably why so few of the big publishers are producing collections. Literary presses such as Salt are very short of money, but they need to exist if published writing isn’t to be restricted to a choice of predictable commercial fiction and the work of a few celebrity authors.


I’m always nervous appearing at big festivals like this - I much prefer small intimate venues where you can engage with the audience. But my own events seemed to go well - I had a good audience for the Katherine Mansfield talk - part of which was filmed - and they all seemed to enjoy themselves. Some of them even bought books!


And the following day we all had a lovely afternoon, with a sumptuous tea, at Greta Hall - the historic home of Coleridge and Southey - imagining what it must have been like to live there - though not with Coleridge who was, according to Southey, ‘murderous to all domestic comfort’ after the copious consumption of opiates and brandy.

Greta Hall, Keswick

Those who took part in the writers’ workshop early in the afternoon even had the opportunity to sit and write in some of the historic rooms - Coleridge’s study, Sarah’s bedroom, Southey’s parlour, Hartley’s parlour - and soak up the atmosphere. My favourite part of the house is the hallway, remembering the description of the line of clogs (there were 11 children not to mention all the adults) arranged in order of size all the way from the front door to the kitchen - which still has the original dresser and wood fired range. The current owners have kept all the original features and with 7 children running around, and fires burning in the grates, it feels very much as I imagine it must have done 200 years ago.

And now home to start work on the talks for the next two events I’m booked to do this month, but utterly distracted by the tragic events on the other side of the world. I can hardly bear to switch on the TV to confront the suffering in Libya and now in Japan.

Margaret Atwood: "Our Cat Enters Heaven"

The International Conference on the short story has just been taking place in Toronto and generating a lot of interest which, I hope, is another sign that the short story is making a come-back.

Margaret Atwood's satirical story 'Our Cat Enters Heaven' is an offshoot of her recent novel, The Year of the Flood, where God's Gardeners believe that animals are their kinfolk and they all have souls and should be treated accordingly.  Margaret Atwood isn't a particularly fluent reader of her own work, but the story made me smile - a lot!

Sunday Times Short Story Award

Congratulations to New Zealand poet and writer C K Stead, who was announced as the winner of the Sunday Times short story award on Sunday. It is richly deserved, and will also give some comfort to the older generation of writers - Karl Stead is 77. Five years ago he suffered a severe stroke and believed that he would never be able to write again, but he did and is now almost as prolific as ever.

His story was described as ‘haunting and beautifully crafted’. It is set in Croatia and tells the story of a young writer who criticises a much older one in print, damaging both their reputations. Hanif Kureishi - one of the judges - said that it was ‘a wry, perceptive look at rivalry and love. It was a pleasure to read, and is a fine example of how a short story should be constructed and written.’
Anyone who would like to hear an extract, beautifully read, just follow this link.

I once met Karl Stead at a literary event we were both involved in. He is one of the leading Mansfield scholars - someone I needed to talk to when working on the biography. Finding myself next to him at the buffet table, I managed to pluck up the courage to tell him how much I’d enjoyed his novel on Katherine Mansfield, hoping that this might be the conversation opener I needed. But he answered curtly, ‘I’ve never written a novel about Katherine Mansfield’, leaving me red-faced with embarrassment and doubt. Had I spoken to the wrong man? Had he ever, in fact, written a novel about KM? Or was it just a figment of my imagination? I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, just stammered apologies and went to stare at the sandwiches. When I got home I went straight to my bookshelves. There it was, the novel ‘Mansfield’, by C.K. Stead. I re-read a few pages and yes, it was ‘about’ Katherine Mansfield. And the man I had spoken to was definitely Karl Stead. It’s a mystery I’ve never solved. Perhaps he just didn’t want to talk to anyone. It’s one of those embarrassing moments that stay with you for life and make your skin prickle every time you think of them.....

Kate Clanchy: The Not-dead and the Saved

Congratulations to Kate Clanchy who has just won the BBC Short Story award with a story called 'The Not-dead and the Saved'. It's a wonderful piece of writing. Some critics have expressed surprise that a Poet should have won, but the crafting of the short story has more to do with poetry than prose.

Margaret Drabble - one of the judges - has written a very good article about the award. 'Critics wisely shy away from trying to define the short story. We know one when we read one, and we recognise the names of the writers of the past — Chekhov, Isaac Babel, de Maupassant, Henry James. But the form remains elusive and unpredictable. It’s not just an apprenticeship for longer work, though it has served as that. It’s a genre complete in itself, and some of the great stories have the economy and concentration of poetry. Some are interior monologues, some evoke one moment in a relationship, some suggest a huge backdrop of un-narrated events, some depend on a devastating punch line.......Short stories aren’t just very short novels'

She adds that 'the winning story was outstanding, one of the finest I have read'. Apparently the judges verdict was unanimous.

I love Kate Clanchy's poetry - I'd like to share one from her first collection, 'Slattern', [a poem now in the public domain].

Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell

This is simply to inform you:
that the thickest line in the kink of my hand

smells like the feel of an old school desk,

the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent

my armpits sound a bass note strong

as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp

as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,

on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape

of my neck, just where you might bend

your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet

of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

The Man-Booker Long List 2009

There are no surprises this year - all the usual suspects are there. A feast of reading for anyone able to get hold of them.

AS Byatt - The Children's Book
JM Coetzee - Summertime
Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze
Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man
Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness
James Lever - Me Cheeta
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer - The Glass Room
Ed O'Loughlin - Not Untrue & Not Unkind
James Scudamore - Heliopolis
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn
William Trevor - Love and Summer
Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

The only book on this list that I've managed to acquire so far is Sarah Hall's How to Paint a Dead Man, sitting on my bedside table. How I'm going to get hold of the others, I don't know - the library copies will disappear immediately. This is the major problem for a book-aholic - how to afford your weekly fix (on an author's income). I daren't go on Amazon for fear of bankruptcy (Oh, the temptation of 'buy-with-one-click!!). I raid the libraries, but these days they are somewhat cash-strapped and small rural libraries are the worst affected. Book stocks have suffered. Second hand shops are my next call, but even Oxfam are charging £2.50 for a paperback these days, and the books people are throwing out are often clones of the ones I have at home. So I usually read the latest publications months after everyone else.

There are four books I'm waiting avidly for - not due out for a few more weeks and so not eligible for The List. They are:

John Banville, The Infinities
Margaret Atwood The Year of the Flood
Thomas Kineally The People's Train
Alice Munro 's latest short stories

Alice Munro is easily one of the greatest fiction writers of the past decade, yet she never makes it to the Booker Prize list - because she writes short stories. So why don't we see short story writers on the list? It is a prize for Fiction, after all - we're missing out on some of the greatest writing of all.

The short story vs the novel

Back from Italy and loving the Italian weather in England. Neil’s sculptures look wonderful among the olive trees - it was very hard to leave. But now I must get down to the business of choosing illustrations for the biography and sending off endless letters and emails asking permission to use quotes and photographs. I’ve found a wonderful photo of KM in an out-of-print book which Penguin want to use for the cover, but I can’t find out who has the original.


I’m also working hard on a talk about Dorothy Wordsworth for the Gaskell Society conference, being held in Cumbria this year, and trying to finish a short story. Why are they so difficult? Why should 3,000 words give me more trouble than 30,000 words of anything else?

The problem is that you’ve got to have all the depth of back-story and characterisation that there is in a novel, without the space. The words have to work hard. KM thought the difference between a novel and a short story was the amount of time it was exposed to the creative process. ‘In the case of the short story it is possible to give orders that, unless the house is on fire – and even then, not until the front staircase is well alight – one must not be disturbed; but a novel is an affair of weeks, of months; time after time the author is forced to leave what he has written today exposed to what may happen before tomorrow. How can one measure the influence of the interruptions and distractions that come between?’

For me, the difference is also structural. A short story is like walking past a house in a dark street - I love doing that when all the lights are on and none of the curtains drawn. You can look in and see the people in the rooms, talking, doing small domestic things - glimpse odd emotional dramas, but then you walk on. All you have in a short story is that brief snapshot. In a novel, the front door would be open and you’d be able to go inside the house, wander around, price up the furniture, peer into the cupboards, have a glass of wine in the back garden, and get to know the people intimately. You’d have all the time and space in the world before the fire brigade arrived!