Following up with Flosca Teo.

A few months ago I interviewed the collective of writers that makes up Flosca Teo, and highlighted their rather unusual competitions – recently I got back in touch with them to find out how things were going …


In the couple of months since you launched Flosca Teo and particularly your two competitions, you must have developed quite an insight into how writers and the writing world operates. What's been the biggest surprise?

The biggest surprise has been the enthusiasm with which some well-established writers and publishers greeted our new enterprise. When we set out we were unsure how people would respond to us, and I think there was a fear among some of us that we would be viewed as yet another publishing company trying to squeeze into a crowded marketplace, but after our launch and in the subsequent months we have received some very positive feedback from people who want to see us succeed. Much of their encouragement stems from the fact that, unlike most publishing companies, we are comprised of fellow writers who know what it is like trying to gain an audience while simultaneously trying to develop one's craft, and people recognise this and want the best for us.

How are the entries for the contests coming along?

They are coming in steadily, but at a slow pace so far. We are expecting the majority of entries to arrive in the next few months, before the deadline of December 15th, because (as I'm sure you and your readers know) writers have a tendency to put off submitting for a competition until right before the deadline.

What process are you using for shortlisting? (writers are endlessly fascinated by the way competitions are administered, I find!)

All entries are filed and numbered, with the entrants names removed, and once the December 15th deadline has passed we will use two panels of critical readers to filter down the entries to a reasonable number to be sent to our final judges in each competition - David Means for the Flosca Short Story Competition, and Liam Ó Muirthile for the Flosca Irish Language Poetry Competition (Comórtas Filíochta Gaeilge). The final decision will then rest with them.

Given that you're all recent writing graduates yourselves, you must be having to balance day jobs, your own writing and commitments to the collective. Have any of you had any particularly good/bad literary experiences in the past couple of months that you'd like to share with us?

Besides running Flosca, working the nine-to-five grind of our day-jobs, and contributing to extra-curricular literary endeavours, all the collective has been continuing to write and several Flosca members have completed drafts of novels or poetry collections, a few of which are in the process of being published. Writing is what brought us them together and it is what, they hope, will keep them working together for a long time into the future. Here are the individual literary experiences of some Flosca members, in their own words:

"I have published short stories and poems in Playboy magazine, Bohemian Quarterly, San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times, ROPES, and other publications. I have completed my first novel which is awaiting publication." W.D.McC.

"I took on quite a demanding job which left a narrow window for creative endeavours. I play a lot of music so this made things even more difficult. Part of my job involves a lot of reading and editing so that has helped keep things in check, and the impulse to create is stronger and building all the time and I'm learning to do it in spurts, and avail of any available time. I'm writing in bits and pieces but am confident it's informing something bigger at the end of the day, a novel or a few collections of poems and short stories. I want to let things settle as well, I'm 23 and don't want to rush in - I want to save, travel, and then take three or four months to attend to writing as a day job, so to speak. I'm currently getting a collection together to enter the Patrick Kavanagh poetry competition. I'm not deferring things but I am looking at February to May to work on a novel. I'm currently writing reviews and a bit of poetry, and I'm constantly writing notes and small pieces for a novel." C.N.

"I read at the launch of The Stinging Fly, and received my first two paychecks for writing. I found this to be an incredible and gratifying experience, but I got rejected from about four magazines, and found that to be an annoying experience. I'm writing a lot and like having a day job because it gives me both ideas and an escape from writing, but I am really coming to terms with how disciplined writers have to be to juggle life and writing." D.D.

"It's summer. Well, not according to the weather. But my small daughter is not in school: with me 24/7 and despite being asked the same question over and over and going on interesting day trips and ringing friends who have gone to sunnier places, I have managed to send work to The SHOp, The New York Times magazine, and Poetry Ireland. Meanwhile, my sleep is interrupted with a few perfect words for rewrites. Tired but happy." M.M.

You can find out more at http://www.flosca.com/Default.aspx

Charles Lambert - http://charles-lambert.blogspot.com/- did this to me:

"Each player starts with eight random facts/habits or embarrassing things about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog."

Hmm, as he says in his blog about being tagged, fiction writing is quite often a way of doing this anyway, but here goes:

1 - when I was a baby I was baptised in hospital after a car crash - the doctors didn't think I'd survive

2 - I was once a body-double for a much more famous model who was in a clinic being 'tired' but the photographer sent me home without pay because I was underendowed for the job

3 - I can sit in the lotus position for hours

4 - I was once (very briefly) engaged to a Radio Luxembourg D.J.

5 - I was once engaged (for a bit longer) to a Hell's Angel

6 - Actually I've been engaged eleven times, eight times resulting in a nice shiny engagement ring (the other three ... either I dumped them before they could buy a ring or I threw the ring at them, heigh ho)

7 - I failed all my A-Levels and left school to become a receptionist at a dental practice

8 - I once worked as an agony aunt for nudists.

And I'm tagging: Steve Augarde, Myfanwy Collins, Bunny Goodjohn, Steve Kane (who never plays the game, damn him!), Sophie Mayer, Patti Moed, Donna Storey and Ed Touchette ... have at you, bloggers!

Strategy (and tactics) for fiction writers


I spend a lot of time coaxing (and coaching) writers into becoming prolific submitters of work (which, of course, requires them to be prolific writers - a useful by-product) and use my own record as an example of what a half-way competent but commited writer can achieve. This is called broadcast submission - basically it means having an agreed number of unpublished works (let's say ten) in hand at all times, and having all ten out for consideration at at least one publication, at all times.

But there's a step beyond this, and it's the tactical approach. The distinction between tactics and strategy is important for people who want a career in fiction. Strategy is high level stuff - for example, I'd love to be published in the New Yorker, so I send stuff to them three or four times a year. I have a rough idea what they publish and what format it has to be sent in, and a very clear idea that almost nothing they publish is:

1 - non-American
2- non-agented
3-not accompanied by a personal introduction to a high up honcho.

So my strategy is just to pick what might suit them, and stick it in the post, without hope or expectation.

But there have been a couple of places that I really wanted to get published recently - places that were more likely to be within my reach - and for them I had both strategy and tactics.

The strategy was the same, send them stuff that matched their publication ethos without hope or expectation, but the tactics were what mattered, and they were:

1 - to read each issue of each publication, noting the themes of their chosen fiction, the editorial commentary and the other places, events and people they chose to publicise - this gave me a clear idea what they liked
2 - to google each publication and see what was said about it in reviews and blogs - that gave me a clear idea of the readership for that publication
3 - to send something that matched the reader profile and the publication aesthetic EACH and EVERY time there was a submission call.

It took eight months to place with the first publication, fifteen with the second and twenty-two months with the third. As I'd given myself till the end of this year to succeed with them all, I have three months of 'targeted publication' 2007 left, now I've achieved my aims, which I shall spend eating grapes peeled by dancing boys and drinking deep from the fountain of literature!

Seriously though - deciding where to have a strategy, and where to have a strategy plus tactics, means that you focus your efforts on achievable success. If the New Yorker took something, it would be like winning the lottery, but my three sucessful tactical approaches have been more in the nature of Premium Bonds - not huge wins, but welcome all the same. And never forget that the New Yorker is more likely to publish successful writers, so every submission that succeeds moves you closer to that jackpot!

An Evening of New Writing

Well, it went marvellously, though I say so myself. Actually I knew it would, because Alayna Munce's book, When I Was Young And In My Prime, is beautiful, strong, poetic and resonant and Maria Jastztrebska is one of my favourite poets, not just because I like her poetry, but because she has a wonderfully intimate and yet powerful reading style which leads the listener into new thoughts and new places with perfect authority. Catherine Mansfield from Telegram Books mc'd us very nicely, and there was a great sense of friendliness and pleasure to the whole event.

Old friends came along and made the evening into a social joy and new friends came along and turned out to be lovely people! Books were sold and signed, wine drunk, flyers collected and tucked into pockets, applause was warm, conversations were warmer still.

And yet - I'm still enough of a wimp to say the nicest thing about the whole evening - for this writer - is that it's over ...

Synchronicity

A few days ago I reviewed Brian Aldiss's excellent 'Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith's' on this blog. This morning my subscriber copy of The Frogmore Papers arrived and I see that Mr Aldiss has a short stoy in it! Not only that, but a story which - on skimming - relates to his novel Frankenstein Unbound, later filmed by Roger Corman.

I'm going to keep the story to read after my own reading tomorrow, because (a) it will feel like a reward and (b) I'm too nervous already to read with any kind of care and attention, but I'm thrilled to have it to look forward to.

And (ahem) final reminder:

An Evening of New Writing

Canadian author Alayna Munce will be reading from her new book, When I was Young and in my Prime.
‘Moving, funny, full of hard truths’ - The Globe and Mail, Canada

With local authors:Kay Sexton, co-author of Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel
‘Inventive in language and exuberant in narrative’ - Russell Celyn Jones

Maria Jastrzebska, poet, and author of Syrena
‘Both confident and distinctive’ - Suite101.com

Sunday 16 September at 7pm, the Cella, Sanctuary, Brunswick Street East, Brighton & Hove, UK. Tel: 07886 135 970

Requested Material

There can't actually be many happier words that a writer can write. The End is good, but Requested Material is better. It's what you put on the outside of your parcel when you send your manuscript off to an agent who has asked to read it.

Yes.

Again.

No. I'm not saying which agent. Nor am I thinking about timeframes, or decisions, or what it would mean if this agent said 'yes' to my novel. I am simply noting that I am a lucky writer, and that getting this far deserves a celebration - so I invite you all to sip, slice, suck or nibble on the delicacy of your choice with my blessings, my best wishes for your writing careers and my thanks for your company thus far.

(And if any of you care to cross your fingers, I shall certainly cherish your support)

Over the hill

I'm forty-five today. My grandmother is still going strong at ninety-six (well, she's completely gaga mentally - but physically going strong) and my great-grandmother made it into her nineties with a glass eye and a love of the horses that made her the spitting image of the gradma in the Giles cartoons, so I can probably say with some confidence that I'm halfway through my life.

I started writing fiction in 2003 - my career (such as it is) to date has been short indeed. Of course I've done other things before, some of them downright weird, and most of them contribute to my writing in some way or another, but fiction very swiftly became the thing I knew I was going to do for the rest of my life.

But then you wonder ... ninety year old novelists? Are there any? Of course we have some great old men of letters (and some women creeping up on them too, and one can assume great old women will overtake the men in longevity stakes pretty soon) who give examples of a continuing productive future into extreme age.

The one thing that today's reflections have brought me to realise is that there is probably no rush, and that I'd like to be able to look back, at ninety, and say that I did a good job, most of the time. And that usually means giving the writing more time, more time, more time ... to mature, to crystallise, to assume the shape it wants to be in. And suddenly the horizon looks quite a long way away.

Perhaps I should slow down a bit ...

Bury my Heart at W.H.Smith's

I made a pact with myself this year that I would read one book on writing a month. It might be a craft book or an autobiography, but I would plough through it. So far I've had three good months of the eight, and the first was cheating because I re-read Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott's wonderful book about being a writer, rather than doing writing.

Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer was my second good month - given that she wrote her excellent text in the 1930s, you can assume it's stood the test of time, although I was more than a little disconcerted to find that several right-brain/left-brain techniques I thought I'd lifted straight from Buzan for my writing students were actually laid out by Brande - who must have been well ahead of her time.

Then I had a rotten few months. I am not fond of most books on writing - finding them either self-indulgent or pedestrian, and from March to August I'd have to say my prejudices have been largely confirmed. So thank all literary Gods for the impressive Brian Aldiss and his collection of thoughts, essays, opinions and ideas entitled Bury my Heart at W.H.Smith's.

I would take issue with him in a few places - I do not believe, for example, that women are less prone to 'ideology as a terrible scourge of the intellect' than men - I just think the publishing industry has tended to publish idealogue men and not idealogue women as a form of gender prejudice (look at Anne Coulter in the USA these days for an example of modern gender equality in this area). I do not always agree with his views on other science-fiction writers (although his scathing attack on Heinlein is worth the admission price alone, as it were), and I don't believe that some of his stated views on creativity and manic-depression are borne out by current research, although others are.

What I most admired about this book was the complete lack of artifice - Mr Aldiss says that 'admirers often find their favourite authors disappointing in the flesh' - and here he makes no attempt to give himself a more appetizing persona, though he could. He delineates the rather obsessive, often reclusive and terminally boring process of 'being' a writer without grace notes or apologies and at least half a dozen times I put down the book to grin ruefully and realise that my own strange behaviours are not personal but professional. Of most note, as far as I was concerned was a bluntly realistic essay on continuing to be a writer, rather than 'becoming' one, which he could have written with me in mind, it so clearly echoes my own concerns about the number of courses and tutors who teach people to 'begin' to write without giving them the tools for a self-reliant, productive, realistic lifetime of writing.

Can't recommend this book too highly, but be prepared for the various buckets of cold water that Aldiss empties over the pretentions of 'literary life' - not for the faint-hearted!