The Words With Jam Short Story Competition

My short story, The Legacy has been shortlisted in The Words With Jam Short Story Competition.  The story is set in Thailand and is about family relationships.  It's one I wrote sometime ago, but I recently re-worked it using some of what I learnt on my Creative Writing MA course.  It just goes to show that one should never give up!

The First Parisot Writing Group Outing

On Thursday the Parisot Writing Group went on its first outing.  The destination was Chateau de Cénevières in The Lot.  The Chateau and the Lot River are the inspiration behind the story one of our members is writing and it was illuminating to see the actual setting for her story and to envisage her characters there.  The owner’s son, Patrick de BRAQUILANGES gave us the tour and it was interesting to get the perspective from someone who had grown up in the chateau.  He showed us a cot that all the Braquilanges babies had slept in.  He offered us a glass of wine at the end, which went down very well!   Afterwards we had a picnic at Calvignac and wandered around the contemporary art structures installed there as part of the Exoplanete Lot exhibition.  We agreed that a summer outing should be a regular feature on the writing group agenda!    

Critiquing

This summer the Parisot Writing Group met up for some critiquing sessions.  The idea was to keep to a 1,000 word limit and to circulate our pieces a week before the date to allow people time to read each other’s work.  I found the sessions extremely helpful.  It seemed to work better when the group was smaller (six instead of ten for example). Furthermore, at the first session everyone spoke at once and this made it difficult to take on board all the comments.   At subsequent sessions we adopted a different strategy and each member of the group took it in turns to speak.  This seemed to work a lot better.

Critiquing is difficult to get right – it takes time to build trust and some people are better at giving/receiving criticism than others.  I think it's one of those things that improves with practice.  On my Open University course when we critiqued each other’s work we were told to imagine we were creating a “praise sandwich” by doing the following:-

• Firstly, try to acknowledge what works overall.

• Follow it with an objective criticism, commenting on why the piece might not pull you in, why the voice might not be realistic or engaging, whether anything is over the top or underdeveloped.  As long as the criticism is objective, it can be useful to speak your mind. 

• Lastly, add a comment on any touches of the writer’s style that you particularly liked and state why.

For me, I think the most important thing is to be encouraging.   After all, it’s very easy to say what doesn’t work, but it takes more time and effort to say what does. 

Flash 500

I entered two short stories into the Flash 500 competition and was delighted to have one of them shortlisted. Congratulations to the winners whose stories can be read on this link.  My story, Au Revoir, was an amended version of a longer story that was shortlisted a while back in the Global short Story competition.  It was inspired by an exercise I did with the Parisot Writing Group using the prompt of a funeral.  I am particularly enjoying writing flash fiction at the moment and the result has encouraged me to enter more competitions.  

Writing Workshop

This weekend, Amanda Hodgkinson came to do another workshop with the Parisot Writing Group.  It was a fantastic weekend and I’m now busy trying to put into practice what I learnt.   There was a lot of discussion on the importance of character and we did several exercises where we really got under the skin of our main characters.  Following the critiquing session at last year’s workshop, I felt this year we were able to critique each other’s work with more honesty and clarity.   Amanda is such a good listener and we think this has made us better listeners too.  We hope she will come back next year!

As usual, lots of eating and drinking was done and I’m still working my way through the chocolate! 

Amanda is one of the tutors at Writing At The Castle in July.

An impromptu photo call on Saturday night

           

Be Prepared!

Saturday saw me up early and on my way to London to attend the Writers & Artists’ "How to Hook an Agent" Workshop.  Having completed my novel, The Gift, I felt that I needed some guidance on the submission process before sending it out to agents.   The workshop was made up of sessions on knowing when your novel is ready, what should be included in a submission package, how to pitch your novel and what appeals to agents in a submission.  The first session was lead by Ed Wilson (Johnson and Alcock) and Juliet Mushens (UK Literary Division of The Agency Group).  The next session was lead by Juliet Pickering (Blake Friedmann Literary Agency) and Hellie Ogden (Janklow & Nesbit).  All the agents were professional, encouraging and unintimidating.   

The session ended with a ten minute one to one meeting with one of the agents where we were given the opportunity to pitch our novel.  I was nervous about my ten minute session, but I had done some research and chosen the agent whom I felt was right for my novel.  I needn’t have worried, as I was made to feel instantly at ease.  I linked up with some other interesting writers too.  I learnt another valuable lesson - most of the other attendees seemed to have business cards so I must get some printed - much more professional than scribbling my contact details on a scrappy piece of paper!     

Walking and Writing

How does it happen?  I can be walking along when suddenly I have the answer to a short story or chapter that I have been struggling with.  I’m not evening thinking about it, but in the story creeps.  It is at times like these that I wish I had a notebook and pen with me, but I never do!  Instead I have to hold on to the idea and keep playing it in my head until I’m back home.  This is what happened to me yesterday.  I was concentrating on the muddy path, being careful not to slip over and wham I had the solution to a problem with a short story I’m working on.   

There has been research linking the advantages of walking to creativity.  Here is a link to an article that appeared in The New Yorker on why walking helps us think.  It certainly works for me!

The Parisot Writing Group (PWG)

The PWG met for its first session of the season on Monday when we looked at the importance of theme in writing.  At Amanda Hodgkinson’s writing workshop earlier in the year, she had said to the group how important “theme” was.  Over the summer I asked the group to write a 300 word piece on one of the themes listed below:- 

Regret

Desire

Escape

Guilt

Money

On Monday we read out what we had written.  It was obvious from everyone's writing what the theme was, although in most cases, the theme itself wasn’t mentioned.  I found it a liberating exercise and chose to write a piece of life writing, which I don’t normally do.  One member commented that in thinking about theme she was able to write without worrying about a structure of beginning, middle and end – the writing just flowed naturally.

Here is my piece:-

REGRET

My mobile phone shakes into life.  As I take the call I feel numb with disbelief.  She was meant to be coming home tomorrow.  Do I get in the car and drive or will I be too late?  As I listen to the prognosis I twist the ring I always wear on my middle finger, a thin band with a group of three small diamonds, her engagement ring.  She had given it to me ten years ago.  I had refused, but she had insisted, her hand enclosing the ring in mine.  Try it on she had urged.  It had fitted my middle finger perfectly.  She had been ill then too, but she had pulled through.  I had offered to give the ring back, but she had wanted me to keep it, to treasure it like she had done.  It is precious to me and I wear it always.  I feel I’ve let her down.  I should be there as the life seeps out of her, but I know I’m too late.   

We finished off the session with a look at titles where we listed the unique selling point of our book/work in progress and the genre and then asked everyone in the group to come up with an appropriate title.  This was harder than I envisaged!

This weekend it is the Parisot Literary Festival and we’re looking forward to hearing fellow member Vanessa Couchman read extracts from her book The House at Zaronza.  The Parisot Literary Festival was a popular event last year and this year there is another great line-up of authors.    

Writing Buddy

I’ve missed my writing buddy this week.  I didn’t have a writing buddy until a few months ago – it was one of the pieces of advice given at our writing workshop with Amanda Hodgkinson back in April.

Over morning coffee my writing buddy and I review about 5,000 words of each other’s work.  I value her comments and look forward to our sessions as they help me to stay on track with my writing.  We’re both writing contemporary fiction and recognise each other’s strengths and weaknesses.   As well as giving each other constructive feedback, we give each other encouragement.  Writing can be lonely and our sessions make it less so.

The House at Zaronza by Vanessa Couchman is published!

Last night I attended the launch party, along with other members of the Parisot Writing Group, for The House at Zaronza, my friend Vanessa’s first book.  The novel, which falls under the genre of historical fiction, is set in Corsica, a place I love.  We are so proud that one of the Parisot Writing Group has achieved such success and we were thrilled to join the celebrations.  I’ve enjoyed reading Vanessa’s short stories and I can’t wait to read The House at Zaronza.  It is published by Crooked Cat and is available through Amazon.    

The Parisot Writing Group (PWG)

I realised I haven't mention the writing group I belong to on my blog in any detail.  I formed the PWG nearly two years ago at the library in the village of Parisot, Tarn-et-Garonne, France.  It has been a rewarding experience and has really helped me with my writing.  We started out as a group of nine.  At that time, some of us had been writing for a while and others were new to writing.   We meet up for three monthly sessions in both the spring and autumn.  The sessions are just over two hours long.  Having the meetings structured in this way means that most people make every session and we still have eight original members plus two new ones.   The first group proved so popular that I started a second group last autumn, as I didn’t want the number of the original group to be more than ten.    We are now at a stage where everyone feels comfortable sharing their writing and trusts each other.   This year we kicked off with a weekend writing workshop with Amanda Hodgkinson, which proved a great success and we hope to have more author led workshops over the next twelve months.  One of our members, Vanessa Couchman, has been writing fiction since 2010 and is about to have her first novel, The House at Zaronza published by Crooked Cat later this month, which we are all excited about.  You can check out this link for more details.

Writing Workshop

At the weekend I was privileged to host a writing workshop headed up by Amanda Hodgkinson, the award winning author of international bestseller, 22 Britannia Road and the critically acclaimed novel, Spilt Milk.  There were nine of us for the weekend, all members of the Parisot Writing Group – a supportive and lovely bunch of people.  We all agreed the weekend was a great success, but it was over far too quickly.   Now it is back to some hard graft on my novel, The Gift.  The feedback I received from Amanda and the group means I’m looking forward to working on it again and I have a clearer idea of what I’m trying to achieve.  I know I echo the sentiments of the whole group when I say that Amanda was an inspiration.