Busy Bee

I’ve been very busy lately, too busy to write which is not good. In fact, too busy to even answer emails. What does that mean? My life is too full? I’m doing too much? I need to make drastic cuts?

So exactly what have I been doing?

Some time ago, I voluteered to be a judge for the Chris Evans Breakfast Show 500 WORDS competition. I spent some time reading through children’s competition entries. I’m used to reading stories written by adults, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover the high quality of writing including originality, plot, characterisation, and language. I was constantly surprised and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Over 74,000 stories were received from children all over the UK. After the volunteer judges had chosen their shortlisted entries, the Literacy Trust helped to whittle it down to a Top 50 shortlist! The winners will be announced Friday June 1st 2012 from 0630 live on Radio 2. You can have a look at the shortlisted entries here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/500words/2012/

What else have I been doing?

I’ve been practising what I preach by getting myself a reputation and raising my writing profile! I’ve entered a few competitions, this also takes enormous amounts of time. First I had to find a finished story, one that was appropriate for the particular theme or style of the competition. Then I had to read, re-read and read (out loud) again and again. But, there does come a time when a story feels finished. Something happens, it’s an interesting process, and then all of sudden, I can let it go, fend for itself in the world. One story that I recently entered for a well known competition, had taken nine years to finish. I’m pleased to report that five of my stories have either been short or longlisted.

The short story, The Locket, with the new Writer
http://www.thenewwriter.com/

The Swimmer, with Flash 500 (flash fiction) http://www.flash500.com/index_files/wfq2012.html

The Tree, by Spilling Ink Flash Fiction Competition

http://spillinginkreview.com/

Fallen Women, by the Yellow Room
http://www.theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk/www.theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk/Welcome.html

Tree Love, by The Word Hut
http://thewordhut.com/

I’ve only just started sending work off to competitions. They have hundreds and hundreds of entrants, so I’m very pleased to have been longlisted. I now need to re-edit and re-read to see how I can improve the writing.

Brainstorming

I’ve been running various Greenacre Writers Workshops (with fellow coordinator Lindsay Bamfield). The recent ‘Get Yourself a Reputation’, and ‘Ways into Creative Writing’, were very popular. And these do take some organising. Lindsay and I always get together at least a couple of weeks in advance of workshops where we tend to brainstorm ideas. Unfortuntely our brainstorms always seem to end up giving us more work to do. At one of the sessions, a couple of years ago, I came up with the idea of running a short story competition. This was a huge amount of work albeit enjoyable. From the initial design of the poster, to the list of rules (much brainstorming), the launching in local Finchley Waterstones, the sending out of flyers, advertising on the Internet, plus the many miles walked distributing, to the reading and shortlisting (plus of course friendly arguing) and finally the publishing online of winners. Then there was more designing, this time of the anthology, collating and editing, ordering ISBN’s, and finally sending off to the publishers. And we still weren’t finished, then began another round of posting, this time the anthology, to writers, friends and family who had pre-ordered copies. We are just about to re-launch the second one at the Greenacre Writers Mini Literary Festival which incidentally was another offshoot from one of our brainstorms. This time it was Lindsay, who had been muttering for some time, words like festival, open mike, authors, which I kept pretending not to hear. It would just be a small get-together, she said. A tiny, mini event. The Greenacre Writers (not so mini) Mini Literary Festival, was born. And then more work, the coaxing and persuading of authors to read their writing. One famous author was offered chocolate as a bribe and although he thought we were ’…very funny, and all your inducements very generous. But I'm afraid, despite the temptation, I'm going to have to decline your kind offer…I wish you all the best for the Festival.’ I won’t say who this tempted author was, just that he was well-mannered and delightful, in a Mr Darcy sort of way. And so the work began, the design of the poster, the design of the tickets, checking out the venue…and so on. And now it’s just a few more weeks to go before we get to meet our superstar writers. 

Birthday Celebrations

Whilst all the above organising has been happening, I managed to find time to celebrate my birthday, courtesy of Lindsay, who took me to the South Bank for the World Book Night event.

The first 20 minutes or so were taken up with thank yous and a general introduction to World Book Night. Margaret Atwood was followed by the very funny Hardeep Singh Kohli who was our host for the evening. There were readings from some of the World Book Night titles by authors and celebrities including Mark Haddon, Mark Billingham, Meg Rosoff, Iain M Banks, Martina Cole, and the brilliant Hip Hop Shakespeare Company. Olympic poet Lemn Sissay woke the audience up when he read Shakespeare and other writers read some poetry, Kathy Lette on Dorothy Parker, and Geoff Dyer on Billy Collins. David Nicholls read from WBN book, Great Expectations with a fabulous impression of Miss Haversham. Owen Teale literally became Brian Clough when he read from David Peace’s The Damned United. Colin Salmon gave a powerful reading from Remains of the Day.

Some of the authors read from their own novels Mark Haddon read the opening of his new novel The Red House and the audience were captivated by Turkish author Elif Shafak reading from her new novel Honour.

My favourite was Andrea Levy’s reading from Small Island, the dog shit scene, brilliant.
And when I heard Jon Ronson’s hilarious piece of writing about trying not to teach his son the worst swear word of all, I was spellbound. This, I thought, was how to write a short story.

Apparently, some people said, that compared to last years event in Trafalgar Square, the event lacked some of the excitement. Presumably, because, we were all sitting down behaving ourselves and listening and we were warm. However, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it was the perfect literary treat for my birthday, so thank you to Lindsay.

There’s more?
Looking back at all the interesting things I have been doing recently, I notice a theme. I may not have been sitting writing, but I have been reading, editing, brainstorming writing exercises, speaking to authors and attending literary events. And all this is without the various Greenacre Writers groups, Finish That Novel 1 and 2, Short Story Group and Memoir and Autobiography Group (MAG) that meet up monthly and are often hosted by myself, so of course I have to hoover occasionally, and dust and clean bathrooms, scrub floors…my life is pitiful really. And there’s the day job – three days a week as a Senior Library Assistant in a medical library. Oh and of course, nearly forgot (am about to have a nervous breakdown), the Greenacre Bicycle Rally!! But that as they say is another story, and another one, and another one….

Get Yourself a Reputation - Create a Digital Writing Profile

On Saturday fellow writer and co-founder of Greenacre Writers, Lindsay Bamfield and myself ran a workshop, 'Get Yourself a Reputation', all about creating a digital writing profile. Through preparing and running this workshop plus reading an interesting article by Emily Benet http://www.themarknews.com/articles/4875-selling-a-novel-in-140-characters I began to really think about a writing reputation and digital presence on the Internet.

Imagine if you were to create Facebook pages, Event pages, Page pages, Twitter accounts, blogs. Now imagine that over a short amount of time you had built up a following of writers, a community of like-minded FB friends. What would you have? Answer: A digital reputation, a digital writing profile. And somehow even though you spend far too much time online, looking at emails, liking pages, tweeting and Facebooking and trowling through loads of useless information you have also managed to finally finish that novel. Not only could you follow a publisher using Twitter or Friend them on Facebook, you could message them and ask them to have a look at your digital presence. After all you come as a package and this includes a ready-made fan base. What do fans equal? Potential book-buyers. Your FB friends and family have become a virtual community, and this could be the deciding factor for a publisher who is deciding whether or not to take you on and publish that bestseller. This also applies if you are self published. Why? Because, you want people to buy your books. What better way to encourage them than by promoting yourself and your writing using a range of social media.
 
All these social applications on the internet can create a reader following. As bloggers, tweeters etc we have to be aware that just as we can receive positive support we can also receive negative or downright rude comments. So Just bear this in mind, we are vulnerable out there on the net and sometimes we need a thick skin.

Social media is a way to find out what is going on, the latest competitions, calls for aritcles, funding, events, promotional tools for writers; editors with something to sell. Read other peoples updates, twitters, blogs – do your research before making your own comments.

Decide who you want to follow – Twitter gives ideas – you may want to search for your favourite writers – look on their websites, if they have a twitter account or use FB there will be a link which will take you direct to twitter where you can follow them.

Think about your profile wherever you appear on the Internet. You are building a reputation and it is important to think about what sort of reputation you want to achieve. What are you trying to say about yourself? Always think about your ultimate aim i.e. getting published – think about that potential publisher looking at your profile. Think, eat and sleep writing. First thing in the morning, share your dreams and inspirations, post questions on Facebook - we writers love solving problems. Use the net to create a positive writing presence, a creative writing presence and build yourself a digital reputation.

Paragraph Planet

A little piece of fiction:

published on Paragraph Planet

http://www.paragraphplanet.com/