What I did with my Sunday


I interviewed Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's! It was a hot and dusty day on Clapham Common, and Jerry was running late with all his interviews, but when my turn came I found out why. He's one of the most unassuming, friendly people it's ever been my pleasure to interrogate. He holds conversations with everybody and we were interruped by adoring child fans, buyers from major supermarket chains ... all starry eyed at meeting the man in the white socks and baggy shorts who just happens to have been a pioneer of corporate social values and a manufacturer of bloody good ice cream.

The event was Sundae on the Common, and free ice cream and good live music were the draw for a crowd of several thousand, many of whom came with small children, giving the day a happy atmosphere sometimes lacking in London's live music events. The helter skelter was popular, as you can see.

The article is for Green Futures, who are good enough to commission me to do this kind of thing, so I won't spoil it here, but I will say that I learned a huge amount about how values drove Ben & Jerry's and how the Unilever buy out has changed both companies ... and I ate ice cream, danced with a cow and decided that there are not many better ways to spend a Sunday.

Ambit 185

My contributor copies arrived this morning - it's a wonderful cover! I'm going to sit down and read through this issue over the weekend, carefully avoiding my own story. I never read work once it's published, because until I decide to send it out again somewhere else, I don't want to think of what I would have changed about it, since I saw the galleys.

It's a strange thing, sometimes you don't recognise your own work in writing, but as I've read this story in performance, I expect it will be familiar to me.

Titles

I want to revisit the subject of titles because they are so important, and so few writers (me included) really bother with them as much as they should.

Why do titles matter?

This is why.

The Great Gatsby" might have been called 'Under the Red White and Blue', then
Fitzgerald seriously considered 'The High Bouncing Lover'. Would you buy a book called 'The High Bouncing Lover'? I can't imagine I would.

Dickens was a prolific titler; 'David Copperfield' was at various times 'Mag's Diversions', 'The Copperfield Disclosures', 'The Copperfield Records', 'The Last Living Speech and Confession of David Copperfield, Junior', 'The Copperfield Survey of the World as it Rolled', 'The Last Will and Testament of Mr. David Copperfield', and 'Copperfield, Complete'.

‘Schindler’s List’ was actually published by Thomas Keneally as ‘Schindler’s Ark’- Spielberg changed the title for the film version.

Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’ was originally called ‘The Hours’ and again, the original title has surfaced as a film.

I've just sold a $10 flash fiction - all of 300 words - called 'The Unbearable Being of Lightness'. It's a play on Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' and my story is about somebody who burns in sunshine ... it's a silly title, which has been buzzing around my head for at least six years, and I've finally got rid of it. The flash placed in three hours, because the title was 'great' according to the editor.

So why are at least half the stories I look at editorially so boringly titled? Because writers think the title doesn't matter? Because all their energy goes into the narrative? I don't know, but I wish people would use their undoubted ingenuity and craft to come up with snappier, or funnier, or more intriguing titles. I am sick of stories that are titled with the female protagonist's name, or called the 'something-or-other coffee shop' or 'The day that something-or-other happened'. A title that sticks in my mind is a title that carries its story to the top of my 'worth publishing' pile and a title that bores me rigid earns its story a place on the 'reject' pile.

I feel it's disrespectful to readers to fob them off with something anodyne, it implies I haven't given any thought to what will attract or entice them to my work. I try not to deliver boring story titles (my favourite of my own stories is, 'The Allicholy Tale of the Dispunged Dark Lady' which I think is at least intriguing) but fall into it worryingly often. Now I ask my trusted friends to comment on my titles and often they'll come up with three or four better ideas than I have managed myself. Good titles are important and we shouldn't neglect them.

Working Women: Stories of Strife, Struggles and Survival

Second Call for Submissions: Please post or forward this second call for narratives, papers, and contributions to a book that focuses on the current global trends among professional women to survive in the workplace.

Kogi Naidoo, B.A., B. Ed., M.Ed., D. Ed.
Fay Patel, B.A., B. Ed., M.A., PhD


Should women work? Why should women work? What kind of work should women do? These are only a few of the many issues that society and women continue to wrestle with on a global front. ‘Women in the workplace’ is a notion that continues to be challenged over many decades, in fact, over centuries. Even in the twenty-first century it is especially interesting to note that while professional women in some cultures excel, they continue to struggle for survival and dignity in the workplace in other cultures. This book, “Working Women: Stories of Strife, Struggles and Survival” critically examines the socio-economic and political struggles of professional women across the globe and across cultures. The underlying goal of the book is to identify some of the struggles of professional women who continue to be marginalized in the workplace, who fight for survival, for recognition, for respect, and dignity. These women spend their lives carrying the burdens of their families and their children into and out of the workplace, expending energies and time that are often several fold more than that of their male colleagues. Working women across cultures globally are often short-changed in one way or another. Yet, they succeed. This book gives women an opportunity to share their stories of hardship, struggles, indignity, pain, and suffering. It is an attempt to record the struggles of women in the workplace, and to celebrate their successes. Readers will, not only be educated and informed about women’s struggles, but will be able to critically analyze policies and practices that create barriers for women, ostracize women and marginalize them. It will also provide hope to women struggling against all odds to care for themselves, their families and to balance these roles with the demands of their work.

Women have a right to education and to fair and just employment. Cultural norms and traditions, religion, disease, and poverty have often created barriers to women’s advancement. It is time that women reclaimed what are rightfully theirs. The right to participate in a free and fair democracy must be equivalent with the right to be employed and be treated with dignity and respect. A workplace that is free of sexual harassment, racism, abuse, violence, and indignity must become a reality for those who have struggled and for those who continue the struggle.

Deadline - 15 August

Dr. Fay Patel
Training Consultant
Training and Development Unit
Massey University
Palmerston North and Wellington
Telephone( Palmerston North): +64 6 356 9099 ext.8670
Telephone (Wellington): 64 4 801 5799 ext. 6522
Email: f.patel@massey.ac.nz
Web: http://tdu.massey.ac.nz

Last week's lottery numbers

I've been talking to the editor of a new British webzine who's already in despair about her submissions. They all seem the same, she says. I think every editor out there knows the feeling; you read dozens of well-crafted stories but none of them say anything interesting. This is why talent isn't enough; being able to write well doesn't cut it - you also have to have something to say.

But, to be fair, hers really are all very much the same, and this is because she's suffering under the 'last week's lottery numbers' effect. Because, it's a very new zine, she only has a few sample stories on her website, so people are tending to submit stories like the ones she has on show - after all, that's what we're told to do, read a sample and see if our work fits, right?

The problem is, most people are much better at spotting themes than more ephemeral things like voice. So if your wildly innovative multi-media magazine has a satirical story about a cockroach parliament, you can bet your life that over the next six months you'll get horror stories, true life grunge stories and twist in the tail stories and all they'll have in common is two things - 1, they won't be anything like the stuff you want to publish and 2, they'll have cockroaches in them.

When sending work to a publication, try not to pick last week's lottery numbers!

The excellent Sandra Scoppettone

Okay, here's the deal. Sometimes somebody will read a story of mine, go to the website or the blog and email me. And then - assuming they are not completely insane (as is likely with some of the material I write; it appeals to the lunatic fringe) I reply to them. And nine times out of ten they come back and say 'Wow, you wrote back, that's amazing!'

I'm only a little writer. Okay, I get around a bit. But I'm not any big hill of beans, I'm not even a hillock of beans. And they're surprised I'd bother to write back.

And then there's Sandra Scoppettone. A woman with nineteen (say it loud - NINETEEN) novels under her belt. I first found her work in 1997 when I was in a New York bookstore. I read one, went back, bought two others. Actually, that's a lie. I'd already read, and loved, one of her books under the pen name Jack Early, but I didn't connect the two for several years. As herself she writes funny, witty novels about women detectives. The Laurano series is about a lesbian detective and I fell under the spell of a PI series that was also about the real relationships real women have. Those who've taken my 'Writing about Sex' course know how I hate the stock depiction of lesbianism in genre writing, but Sandra never falls into that.

So ... browsing the net, as one does, I came across Sandra's website. And then her blog. And I wrote some gushy stupid little comment on it, and she emailed me back. That's amazing. And she even went and looked at my writing, and commented on some things I'd said on my blog.

Big writer. Big influence in my early writing about women and sex. Big enough to email complete strangers and give them support and insight.

I am overwhelmed - go and see for yourself how great this woman is at Sandra's blog

Hook into her Heart

This wonderful print is the work of Wuon Gean Ho, an artist and printmaker who was asked to respond to my story 'Acorns and Conkers', recently published in the Tales of the Decongested Anthology. It's a superb image, in which Wuon Gean captures the darkness and manipulative nature of the protagonist, and the faceted nature of her relationship with other women. I'm proud to be the owner of this print, and hope that Wuon Gean and I will work together on a joint project soon. Meantime you can find her inestimably good art at:
Wuon Gean

And on Monday I shall tell you why American novelists are great people!

Ever wanted £18,000 to write a novel ...?

Yes, me too. Which means I must be crazy to tell the rest of you about it. So call me Crazy Kay ...

MCNA is awarding an £18,000 writer's bursary to an aspiring writer (novice or experienced) who would like to dedicate up to 12 months writing a fiction novel. Applicants are invited to write about any subject, so long as it is substantially one of imagination and fiction, and, the writer retains full copyright ownership over their finished work.

The bursary is designed for a writer who would like to work on a novel, however we are accepting applications from writers who would prefer to work on a collection of short stories/novellas.

Comprehensive detail on the bursary, together with information on how to apply and the judging panel is available on our website: Click for details

Writing Flash Fiction

If you're like me, you find summer heat makes writing fiction difficult. Not only is it hard to concentrate, the computer is never in a good place to deal with sun and writing with paper and pen is a sticky, sun-tan lotiony, sweaty business.

This is when I turn to writing flash fiction.

Flash can be defined as anything from 300 to 1000 words. There are many ready markets out there for good flash fiction, but it's not an easy option. Stories have to be tight, without extraneous words, and beginners often struggle to capture an adequate narrative line in such a small compass. At one end of the scale flash fiction merges into that interesting beast, the prose poem, and at the other it is something like good, short after-dinner story. The plus side to ultra-short stories is that the first draft of a strong flash can be completed in twenty minutes, (even I can concentrate for that long!) and revising is much easier than a longer story.

Here are some of my favourite venues:
Vestal Review
Smokelong
Flashquake

Often simple ideas work well for flash. I've worked with one word themes like Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry and produced flash featuring suttee (the act of burning a wife on her husband's funeral pyre), an erotic piece about a woman in a snowstorm (published by Ruthie's Club), a story about rain on the sea (in print with Literary Potpourri) and a story about deserts which ran in both SaucyVox and Thought. Other useful ideas are starsigns (a story about Gemini, for example, could be fitted into 1000 words), seasons, strong emotions, or homages to other writers. I've had flash published that played around with de Maupassant's loathing for Paris and another is due out that looks at bullfights from a non-Hemingway perspective.

Statistics

It's amazing what you can learn from statistics. I've just been transferring my database from one computer to another and as a result I had to sit and look at various tables and charts I'd never really bothered with before.

The first shock was to realise how much longer it takes to find a home for a long story than a short one. Of course this is one writersr's experience only, but I was surprised to find that work under 1000 words takes an average of four months to find a home, and is seen by between one and four editors before it does. Work over 6000 words however, can still be sitting on my hard drive a year after I write it, and may be rejected by up to eleven editors before either placing in a contest or making it into print.

The second shock was that I've never had a completed piece of erotica rejected! Of course, I write most of it for markets that actually commission the work from me, and for editors who know me and with whom I have a good relationship, but even the first piece I've sent to a market new to me has been accepted. Are they so short of work, or am I so good at working out what they want? Who knows?

The third shock was that fiction over 8000 words doesn't seem to place at all unless it's genre work. I've found homes for five science-fiction/fantasy stories of between 8000 and 15000 words, but only one piece of literary fiction over 9000 words has made it into a print market.

I'd love to know what statistics other writers have on their work.

In the meantime, if you want to know how long a market takes to respond, google 'The Black Hole' for sci-fi publishers and/or 'Duotrope's Digest for the literaries. It will help you decide how long to hold your breath and cross your fingers for!

If you want to be a novelist ...

learn to write short stories

Every year I have at least one student arrive for class who 'doesn't want to bother' with short stories because they're working on a novel.

Phooey.

Yes, there are writers who manage to get a book published without working through the apprentice stages of short fiction, but believe me, they are rare. And yes, I don't have a published novel myself yet ... but I have had something over 120 stories published in three years, over half of those in paying markets. I believe it's only a matter of time before I crack the novel business too, and I base that belief on some hard evidence:

1 - I know I can write fiction because people pay me to do it.
2 - I know I have a market for a novel because people read my short fiction.
3 - I know I can work with an editor on a novel because I've worked with dozens of editors on short fiction and spend a fair proportion of my time editing the work of others.
4 - I know that when an agent or publisher looks at my biography they will feel confident I'm not going to be a one book wonder, because I've written so much, and so much of it to order, that we can all be confident I'll keep writing marketable stuff once my first book is on the shelves.

All those writers who slave away on a novel without proving any of these facts will probably come up against one unpalatable truth. There are thousands of good writers out there trying to place their novels. The book business is a money business, not a talent business. Given a choice between a good writer who has no experience and a good writer who can be trusted to behave sensibly over edits, to keep turning out work for years, and already has a platform of readers who will probably buy that first book - which one do you think the publisher will choose?

Yup.

And that's why I urge my students to learn to write short stories.

Memory Palaces

I've been having a discussion with other writers about memory palaces recently. This technique, credited to Cicero, was a device favoured by rhetoricians of the ancient world who had to speak for long periods without notes. The process is to pick a place you know well, and attach notes to objects and views within it, so that as you 'walk' through your talk, you pass them in a logical order. Each note should be the next item in your talk.

The reason I know so much about this concept is that part of my training as a mediator involved 'anti-Stockholm syndrome' techniques, which means that if you were spending a lot of time with people who might be hostile to you, or try to convert you to their cause, you had an armoury of devices to keep your mental and emotional balance. We were asked to 'walk' through our primary school or first home, or grandparents house, whichever was our happiest memory, remembering every piece of furniture, every smell, sound and emotion. A series of questions like 'where did you hang your coat?', 'what was your favourite time of day here?' etc grounded us in the experience.

Once we had 'visited' our place a couple of times we were all astonished at how much we could remember: our mother singing, our teacher's perfume, our third birthday, the time we lost a milk tooth ... and all the vivid details of childhood came back in concrete detail. We discovered it was entirely possible to live in a memory palace in real time - to spend as long watching a favourite TV show in memory as we had in reality. This, when a mediator is held against their will, or isolated with zealots, is how they cope with solitary confinement, harangues, insults and fear.

What has all this to do with writing? Well novelist Maryanne Stahl confirms that she uses a similar technique when writing fiction. I do too. Before I write about a person or place, I walk through their life; feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching every aspect of their reality. Then I can write with confidence because the scene I describe isn't 'made up', it is 'remembered' and that makes all the difference.

The reader is not in the writer's head

One of the biggest weaknesses I see in memoir and creative non-fiction is that the writer assumes every detail that is important to them is also important to the reader. It's not. Salient detail is what counts.

To understand why you mention your primary teacher Miss Oliphant's charm bracelet seventeen times in a 2000 word memoir, I'd have to be in your head, and I'm not. Nor do I want to be. I want writers to crystallise the universal out of their personal experience. Is the charm bracelet horribly creepy because you hear it jangling along behind the small school desks and you know that if your work isn't judged neat enough you'll be shaken? Then show me the fear we all felt when we were small and wanted to please an authority figure - don't simply shake the charms at me and expect me to do the work.

The best writers get into our heads, they don't make us climb into theirs. Stephen King universalises fear; Gustave Flaubert shows us the pain of hopeless love; Hilary Mantel reveals the weird underpinnings of everyday life. They do it by making sure their charm bracelet is like my frighening teacher's hissy breath or your terrifying dinner-lady's wobbly chin; they symbolise the item but anatomise the feeling. What a weak writer does is anatomise the item but then leave us to symbolise the feeling.

Tales of the DeCongested - Brighton Reading

Last night was wonderful! I'd like to thank everyone who came along - the room was packed, and all the readers who gave us such a fantastic evening. I haven't got permission to post anybody else's photographs yet, so you'll have to make do with this one of me until I can check if others are happy to appear here!

The Cella is a small, very intimate venue, and the audience was supportive and appreciative: we had a great selection of stories from: Frances McCallum; Justine Mann; Justine Shaw; Kate Ansell; Andrew Lloyd-Jones; Farah Reza and Frank Goodman. William Shaw from www.unmadeup.com came along and introduced himself - which was great as he's just run a true story of mine on his site, and it was great to see many writing students and friends who came along to enjoy an evening of talent and fun. Particular thanks to Rebekah Lattin Rawnstrone and Justine Shaw from Apis Books, who put the event together and acted as compere and story reader respectively.

If you want to be a writer ...

I don't know JA Konrath, but I admire him.

I'm promoting two anthologies at the moment: Tales of the DecCongested and Tell Tales volume 3. Not because I get royalties from them, I don't, but because I know that if writers don't get out there and support the publishers who put their work on the shelves, those small risk-taking publishers won't last long.

It's a joy to be able to hand a copy of a book to a purchaser, knowing they are about to go home and read your story ... but it's also hard work. Last week I was out delivering copies of Tales of the DeCongested, with posters and flyers and generally schmoozing the good folk of Brighton. I enjoy it, and being asked to sign copies is the best validation any writer can hope for, but you have to earn it.

The gritty details of novel publication are hard to master, so any writer who shares his experience is a resource to be celebrated. JA Konrath is a whirlwind of publishing energy, full of good ideas, hard facts and ways of turning negative signings into positive ones. If you want to be a writer - learn from him.

Click for JA Konrath's publishing blog

Found Stories


I'm always a bit surprised when writers tell me they can't think of anything to write about. My problem is that there just aren't enough hours in the day! Yesterday, for example, standing in the post office queue with my little pile of sample chapters to send to agents (cross your fingers please, for me!) I watched a woman terrorising her toddler with threats to leave her in the shop. Got to be a story in that, I thought.

The older woman in front of me in the queue murmured, 'Patience is a virtue.' I nodded. After a few seconds she turned to me again and said, 'Do you know the whole saying?' I didn't. Bet you didn't either:

Patience is a virtue,
Try it if you can.
Rarely seen in woman,
Never in a man.

I walked home trying to decide whether to start with the story about the differences between male and female patience, or whether it would be best to write about a woman who makes patience into a virtue but by being patient actually turns it into a vice, or whether I should start with a non-fiction proposal to a writing journal about the forgotten lines in common sayings and proverbs ... Four writing ideas from the post office queue.

Writers who can't think of anything to write about aren't using their eyes and ears, let alone their imagination.

Submission call

This one has me fascinated - I've never been published by Gray Friar Press, so I'm not promoting my chums or anything here, but this is a book I would be keen to read, let alone appear in.

PAGING MR HITCHCOCK - an anthology of dark stories inspired by the cinema

Whatever differences we acknowledge between film and prose, it cannot be denied that the two have a major relationship. Cinema has always sought the printed page to inform its storytelling, while authors continually recognise the influence of the screen. Nevertheless, the two media are not interchangeable. Quite enough has been discussed concerning the transition of text to camera, but little has been explored regarding the alternative route: the way literary writers use the imagery and ideas of directors to create their own effects with words.

This book will allow contributors to display how film has shaped their work. Rather than paying homage to a specific film genre, we want authors to choose either a favourite director or a cinematic "style" or sub-genre (see below for suggestions) in order to reveal this. The idea is to demonstrate how different techniques of the camera might be captured, developed or even eschewed by prose. Show us the limitations and advantages of drawing upon the screen; be clever and inventive. Avoid pastiche or a simple conversion of themes, etc — push yourself, and fiction, into new expressionist quarters…

Stories can be any length, though there will be a preference for 4,000-7,000 words; still, if you’ve got a fine novella, send it along. HOWEVER, please send a short synopsis of your story first, the better to avoid overlap. Email your synopses/submissions to BOTH Gary Fry and Gary McMahon at submissions — we're not fussy about font and format, but do make it legible. That's it! Get writing!

NOTE: one of the problems with Gray Friar Press's previous anthology, Poe's Progeny, was that many authors who were rejected simply dug out an existing story and appended a plausible source to it! Be warned — we'll know if you’ve done this, and unless it works very well, will be less inclined to accept or even read all of it. Having said that, the submissions accepted will shape the finished anthology; we're eager to put together a book which is structured as much by the contributors' ingenuity as it is by any preconceived ideas we might possess...

If you're unsure as to the type of fiction the publisher prefers, check out a copy of its previous anthology Poe's Progeny — These tales combine story, character and theme with both craftmanship and an artful use of language.

Payment: negotiated. In the real world of independent press publishing, there's only so much money to make projects viable. We'll be as fair as we can, while guaranteeing exposure — distribution in both the UK and the States — to all contributors. Please enquire.

Response time: ASAP, but please remember that the editors have lives, too.

Deadline for submissions: when it's full.

Submission period opens: 1st December. Please don't submit before that date.

More information:

Examples of directors you might want to consider: Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, John Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog... The list is endless.

Examples of cinematic "styles": New Wave Cinema, 1970s Hollywood movie Brats, European cinema, Japanese cinema, Dogma, American Indie cinema, the cinema of paranoia, Exploitation cinema, Slasher horror, Underground cinema, Silent cinema... In short, anything worthy goes, so be inventive!

All stories will be judged on merit, regardless of the author, though specific writers with some publishing pedigree might make pitching a story with a similar source a tougher option... We'll leave that to you. Here's what we have from the heavyweights thus far:

Stanley Kubrick — Conrad Williams
Hammer Horror — Mark Morris

And something about the Press itself: Gray Friar Press began life in 2003 when its editor, Gary Fry, decided in a fit of characteristic energy and recklessness to start a magazine called Fusing Horizons. To his delight and surprise, the magazine proved to be a success and Gary was immediately encouraged to announce more ambitious projects. The first of these is a major anthology called Poe’s Progeny, which will soon be followed by a number of other books, each focusing on quality fiction: the short story, the novelette/novella, and maybe even the novel if things take off…

Gray Friar Press is dedicated to presenting the best writing (and artwork) in the field of dark literature. It will continue to publish a combination of more established writers and promising newcomers. It will print material to the highest standard and keep prices reasonable within the context of the independent press. Despite the foregoing benevolent intentions, however, it also hopes to shatter your sleep…

Dealing with Acceptance

Groucho Marx famously said 'I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.' It's amazing how often writers share this prejudice.

You'd think dealing with rejection would be bad enough, but many writers make heavy weather of getting a story accepted too.

'Perhaps I should wait until I hear from journal X?' they say or 'Do I really want my work to appear in Z? Is it really the best I could do for myself?'

I've never understood this attitude, despite having spent most of my teens mooning after young men I immediately despised as soon as they asked me out because why would I want to go out with anybody who was interested in somebody as boring as me?

The attitude in writers (and maybe in lovers too) that this behaviour denotes is the philosophy of scarcity - a fundamental belief that there is only so much to go around and if we accept the first offer that comes along, we'll have nothing to give to the second (and probably better) one that follows.

Instead we should adopt the philosophy of abundance (in writing, and maybe in lovers too!) and assume that getting this story off our hands frees us up to write the next story, which will be SO MUCH better than the one we've just placed.

If we assume our talent and industry are finite, we will produce little and hoard that little against a future that might never arrive. If we assume we are unlimited in skill and opportunity, we will be profligate in submitting our work and prodigious in producing more - which would you rather be?

Creative non-fiction

This relatively new hybrid of fiction and reportage is becoming increasingly popular. What is it exactly? I would say that it dramatises factual events by using techniques formerly reserved for fiction. It conveys not just fact, but tries to bring to fact the immediacy and emotional power of fiction to illuminate experience. I have an example up at Unmadeup.com and if the idea of creative non-fiction appeals to you, Will's site might be a great place to try out your budding cnf skills.

Pimp your Prose

Pimping your ride means doing up your car so it looks better (or at least, more eye-catching) and pimping your prose is the same process.

Most of us would need help to get beyond go-faster stripes and back-to-black for our bumpers, and we'd appeal to a specialist pimper for whitewall tyres, decals, shaded windows and a paint job.

Ask your friends and family for help in pimping your prose. From my Jamaican neighbour I learned the phrase 'jump his bones' which means to fancy somebody enough to want to have sex with him. The story that I'd called 'The Perfect Man' didn't sell until I pimped the title into 'Jumping His Bones' and then it placed first time out.

My teenage son contributed 'random' and 'emo' as well as defining 'chav'- all of which are now part of my writing vocabulary. The woman who sells second-hand records in Brighton told me she'd 'sooner hire a death-watch beetle as a childminder than leave her toddler with a woman who wore stilettos', a phrase I used in a story about a suspicious new arrival in a rural community.

All around us, every day, people use words and phrases that are fresh and exciting to us - if we don't steal them and immortalise them in prose, they could be lost forever. Ask your grandmother to describe a dreadlocked youth, or a dreadlocked youth to describe your grandmother and you'll find new words, stunning comparisons and suprising insights that you can slide into your work.