Flash365 2014

Hello there.

Sorry I’ve not been around for a bit. Thought I would pop in, see if anyone is still here (hello?! hello?!) and tell you what I’m up to at the moment.

You see, I’m undertaking another one of my crazy projects at the moment, and I thought it was probably time to explain.

If you follow me on my various social media platforms, you can’t help but be aware that I have been writing like a man possessed and publishing a stream of books. But what’s all that about, I hear you ask. 

Well, over Christmas, I was thinking about my writing and the fact that 1. Having just finished the first draft of a novel, I had nothing on the go, and 2. That I hadn’t written any flash-fictions for a while and, seeing as that’s what I’m known for, maybe I should do some of that.

I thought back to my last flash-fiction project – flash365 in which I wrote stories and posted them to a blog every day for a year – and thought something similar might be worth attempting. There were two things which stopped me from simply redoing that project however.

The first was that, well, I’d already done it, and I was loathe to simply repeat myself. The other thing was that the idea of writing another huge selection of largely unrelated flash-fictions didn’t hold any allure for me.

It may sound arrogant to say, but there is now little challenge to me in the writing of individual flash-fictions. After a year of doing that, I know I can do it – almost to order. I have even started doing it as a party trick: standing up at events, conferences, etc., taking prompts from the audience, and writing a complete story in about five minutes while people watch.

So, what I needed was something with the size and scope of flash365, but with an extra challenge.

One of my favourite parts of flash365 was the stories I wrote in the November; the stories which became Braking Distance. The idea behind those stories was to set them all in a single place at a single time (in this case, in a motorway service station with the event of someone dropping a tray-full of tea mugs occurring in all stories). The result was a series of stories which interlinked and came together to form something akin to a novella.

 That, then, formed the inspiration for what I decided to call flash365 2014.

This consists of writing 365 stories across the year, but grouping them together in 12 collections. Each collection would be linked in some way, to make it a single piece of work, while being made up of as many flash-fictions as there were days in that month (31 for January, 28 for February etc.) And then, just to make life that little more difficult, I decided I would aim to actually publish these collections – on Kindle and Amazon’s CreateSpace print-on-demand platform – by the end of each month.

This means that in each month I would have approximately three weeks to write the whole month’s-worth of stories, and then a week for editing, proofing, type-setting, cover-design and uploading.

I think you’ll agree that this raises the bar set by flash365 to a whole new level of crazy.

As you will note, I am writing this on Monday 7^th April. I started the project on January 1^st, so you might be wondering how it’s going.

Well, so far, so good.

I started by trying to map out what some of the collections would be, what events, themes, characters, etc they would revolve around. And then I got stuck into the first one.

Apocalypse

That first collection was to be set around the end of the world. I started off planning to set them all at the same time, but that quickly became impossible, because the narrative required events to move on, and surprisingly enough the end of the world is not a quick thing.

In the first story, I invented a character who then became strung throughout the collection. Whenever he appeared, time would have moved on – by a few hours, a day, a week, whatever – and that allowed me to set a section of stories in that new time period before moving on.

The result is, as I hoped, similar to a novella, but in bite-sized fictions that give me the scope of a novel, or a series of novels, in only a little over 16000 words. It allowed me to range through my most comfortable genres – horror and sci-fi – but also include a full range including some comedy, some love stories, some domestic scenes and so on.

I was very pleased with this first collection – and with the layout and the cover – and that spurred me on to the next collection.

Apocalypse is available from:

Amazon UK – Kindle version                         Amazon USA – Kindle version
Amazon UK – Print version                           Amazon USA – Print version

(For other territories, please alter the web address to suit.)

The Audacious Adventuress

For this one, I had decided to revisit a character I invented as part of the original flash365: Lucy Burkhampton, swindled heiress and mountain climber. She came from a month of stories written using the titles of Barbara Cartland’s books as prompts. The prompt which started it was The Audacious Adventuress, which to me conjured up a 1950s radio serial featuring an imperilled heroine who moves in each episode from cliff-hanger to cliff-hanger. The original story was corny and clichéd, fun to write, and surprisingly popular.

Since that first story was written, Lucy had had 8 more instalments, each plucked from different and separate parts of the putative serial. So when it came to the book I decided to incorporate the original stories and fill in the gaps. Though, I quickly decided, I wouldn’t completely fill all the gaps.

One of the charms of the Lucy stories for me has always been the fragmented nature of the links between them. Because no two stories follow on, you never find out how she gets out of her cliff-hangers, but by the beginning of the next story she is always in a new one. A large part of the overall narrative happens in the gaps between the stories and is told in shorthand in the ‘Last time on…’ sections at the beginnings.

I originally planned to write three Lucy collections across the year, but once I was into writing the stories, I quickly cut that down to two. While she is fun to write, each story requires you to come up with the details that have happened since the last one, the cliff hanger to start her in, the story itself and the cliff hanger to end her on. That’s a lot of work for only 700 words, and by the end I felt that I was starting to run dry. The second collection will be quite different, so I’m confident I will be able to complete that one, but it was at times a bit of a struggle.

Because of the way of writing, the second collection featured the 28 stories written especially, but also 8 of the original 9 instalments, making it a little over 22000 words in length.

Again, people have enjoyed it – for the adventure, the comedy and for the interesting structure of the book – and I’m pleased that something so different to Apocalypse could also work in the new ‘flash-fiction novella’ format that I was exploring.

The Audacious Adventuress is available from:

Amazon UK – Kindle version                         Amazon USA – Kindle version
Amazon UK – Print version                           Amazon USA – Print version

(For other territories, please alter the web address to suit.)

The Grandmaster

Having undertaken a series of sci-fi/speculative/horror fiction stories set around an event, in Apocalypse, and a parody of the serial adventure in The Audacious Adventuress, I wanted to turn my hand to yet another different genre when it came to the third collection.

In my original planning, all I had written down was the word ‘Crime’, so at least I knew what it was meant to be. What I didn’t know was what the story was, who the characters were, or how I was going to structure the whole thing.

I decided that I wouldn’t simply do a collection of disparate crime stories, partly because I find crime very hard to write within the confines of flash-fiction, and partly because another idea came to me.

I decided to see if I could cover the whole of what would make up a crime novel, but in just the 15000 or so words of a flash-fiction novella. By using this short form, and by implying extra bits of story in the gaps between the fictions, just how much could I cram in?

As for an idea, I went back to a novel which I started and then abandoned after I completed my MA, back in 2001. It was about a killer who was using murders as moves in a chess game.

Unlike the previous two collections, the hardest thing about this one was the plot. I realised that I needed to hit all the traditional beats of a crime novel – murders, clues, investigators, multiple suspects, red herrings – and simply deciding what to do on a daily basis wasn’t going to cut it. So very early on, with only a couple of stories written and a vague idea of the ending, I worked out what was going to happen in all of the stories and made a list to work from.

That made the writing process much easier, and then it became about how I was going to tell each story, and how I was going to imply the extra information.

The Grandmaster came out at the end of March and has also been well-received. At just over 12000 words it is the shortest collection of the year so far, but at the same time it tells the largest single story.

It has also done a good job of setting up a scenario and characters I could return to at a later date, perhaps in a full novel.

The Grandmaster is available from:

Amazon UK – Kindle version                         Amazon USA – Kindle version
Amazon UK – Print version                           Amazon USA – Print version

(For other territories, please alter the web address to suit.)

Lunch Hour and Beyond

And now we’re into April and I am working on book 4.

This collection will be entitled Lunch Hour and is a return to the structure I used for Braking Distance. The stories are linked but separate, creating a larger story from their interconnections rather than any continuing narrative. All the stories feature people who work in the same office and take place during a single lunch hour.

As with Braking Distance, this gives me the scope to hop from genre-to-genre, and to include the protagonists of some of the stories as minor figures in others. I’m only part-way in, but I’m enjoying it and think it will make for a fun collection.

After that, my plans for the year include the second Lucy Burkhampton collection (The Ultimate Quest); an entirely conversation-based collection featuring two more of my previously used characters, Bob and Jim; a collection of unrelated (or not) science-fiction stories; a family-saga spanning many years; a horror/ghost story collection; a time-travel collection; and, to round off the year, in December I will write a sequel to Apocalypse, picking up events a year later, called Post-Apocalypse. That will feature some of the same characters, but also some new ones, and hopefully resolve the larger story which was left hanging at the end of the first collection.

And then, just to cap it all off, I shall gather them all together and publish them as one huge book containing all 12 smaller collections. This will, of course, mostly appeal to completeists, but it will also provide me with a full record of the year, and a book on my shelf with my name in HUGE letters down the side!

Final Thoughts

Writing these collections is a fascinating project, and is already providing me with some academic, practise-based research material about flash-fiction and what it can do when used in these ways.

If you’re interested in what I’m doing, I’d love for the word to be spread about the books (and perhaps garner some sales!)

The collections are on sale as cheap as I can make them. In the month following publication the Kindle versions are only 98p, and then they rise when the next book comes out to only £1.53. The print editions are all only £4.99, so even buying one a month will hopefully not break anyone’s bank.

If you would like to write a review of any or all of the books and would like a free copy of the Kindle or PDF versions, please do get in touch with me at calum (AT) calumkerr (DOT) co (DOT) uk and I’ll send them over.

Also, now I’m back on here, I shall update at least once a month with how things are going.

There might also be some extra posts because I am currently turning my online courses (flash-fiction, life-writing and editing/rewriting) into text books. Stay tuned for more on those!

If you’ve read any of the books and enjoyed them, please let me know, but, more importantly, tell your friends. A project like this relies on word of mouth, so any help would be gratefully received.

'Stop' - a #FridayFlash

Everyone in the office looked shocked to see Mike when he walked in. He knew he wasn’t looking his best, but he also knew that wasn’t the reason for their look. He had sat in the car for ten minutes, wondering if this was the right thing to do, but was unable to think of anything else. He was awake, he was dressed, and it was only Wednesday, so it was time to go to work.

His clothes were rumpled and stained. He had been wearing them since yesterday morning –only yesterday? – and he hadn’t even had a chance to change his underwear or socks. But it was a work day, so he was there.

As he had stared out through the windscreen, hot eyes following the teardrops of rain which ran down the windscreen, he had attempted to gather himself together ready to face the day. He had scrubbed his hands down across his face, hearing and feeling the sandpaper rasp of stubble on his palms. He had known he looked bad, with his hair unwashed and his body reeking of adrenaline sweat, but it was Wednesday, so he had to go to work.

The shocked looks followed him to his desk in silence and gathered around him. No-one left their desk, no-one said a word. They all knew what had happened, but none of them knew what to say. So they said nothing. Mike wasn’t surprised. He was the one it had happened to and he didn’t know what to say either. But it was a work day, so he was here.

He sat at his desk and stared at his computer. He didn’t type anything, or touch the mouse. But when the phone rang he picked it up and answered. His voice sounded normal to his ears, and he asked all the right questions and gave all the right answers. He made no notes, made no move even to pick up his pen, and as soon as the phone was returned to its rest he had forgotten it all. In his mind, all he could see was his wife where he had left her: sitting by Daniel’s bed, still in the jeans and t-shirt she had been wearing yesterday, her knees pulled up to her chest, her hands over her face, and every fibre of her being forcing him from the room, forcing him to leave her alone in her grief. Downstairs in the kitchen the radio had told him it was still only Wednesday morning – the spirits had done it all in one night! – and that it was time to go to work.

At lunchtime he went to the cafeteria. He bought a meal deal without speaking to anyone, enduring the stares and the whispers, and sat at his usual table with the sandwich and the crisps and the drink unopened in front of him. He looked at the food and knew that Daniel would never eat anything again. After ten minutes of sitting, he placed the unopened box, bag and bottle in the bin and returned upstairs for the afternoon’s work.

No-one spoke to him as he sat at his desk, but from time to time one or another of his colleagues approached him. He didn’t look up or acknowledge them, but carried on staring at his blank monitor screen. He was waiting, but he didn’t know for what. He was just waiting. Whichever colleague it was would stand behind him for a time, from moments to minutes, and then would retreat again. Mike heard the whispered conversations that followed these attempts, but the words were meaningless to him. There had been whispering in the hospital, between the doctors and the nurses, but it had also meant nothing. All that had mattered had been his son’s swollen face, the glass-filled gashes on his chest, and the feel of his small hand holding onto Mike’s much larger, but utterly helpless one.

When five thirty arrived, the other people in the office started to pack up and leave. One person placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder as they passed, but still nothing was said. Mike took that as he cue. He stood and left the office with the others. He stood, silently, in the lift with them. He walked out of the building with them and returned to his car.

He sat, staring out through the windscreen, into the dark winter evening, as the car-park emptied around him. The black windscreen played images to him, of his wife dropping the phone and falling to the floor, screaming, of Daniel’s chest rising and falling, rising and falling, hitching and stilling,  and of himself being pushed backwards by a passing doctor as a single tone filled the world and everyone had a job to do except for him.

He watched these memories as they looped, over and over. He wanted to scream and cry, but he couldn’t. His hands tightened on the steering wheel and nothing happened. He thought about driving home. He thought about driving away. He tried to imagine that Thursday might follow on from Wednesday.

He sat in his car as evening turned into night.

What Keeps Us Going - Guest post from Jonathan Pinnock

[As part of the blog tour for his new book, Dot, Dash, Jonathan Pinnock shares his thoughts on how to keep going in writing...]

Back in the day, when I was starting out as a writer (well, not quite, but we’ll come onto that later), I used to stalk other writers. The ones who won things. The ones who were getting their stories published. The ones who were, in summary, more successful than I was. I would devour their blogs to find out where they were scoring hits and why.

Just as I was beginning to clock up a few scores myself, one of my stalkees suddenly went off air in 2008. There seemed to be no apparent reason, because he still seemed to be doing pretty well. I used to wonder if he was OK and if he was, what it was that had caused him to throw in the towel.

Last week, however, his name – or at least the name of a piece of his that I’d particularly liked – popped up again in a new anthology, and I went hunting for his blog. Unexpectedly, it was still there and even more unexpectedly he seemed to have resumed blogging and writing earlier this year. There was no real explanation for the hiatus.

He isn’t the only writer I know of who has suddenly gone offline, although he’s probably one of the more successful ones. And I think this happens more often than we night imagine. You need a considerable degree of determination and sheer single-minded pigheadedness to succeed as a writer.

I wrote my first story since leaving school (actually, my first since O level) in 1986. It was an idea I’d had for ages and I thought it was completely brilliant. I wrote it for a competition run by none other than Rymans (really!) and because you could enter two stories for the price of one, I wrote another. The second one was unfortunately complete bollocks, and I knew it.

Impressively, you got a half-page critique for each story, which basically confirmed that the second story was indeed bollocks, although the first one had some promise. However, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t come up with any ideas for other stories and this basically meant I had one single story to submit anywhere. Which I duly did, a year later, to the BBC. And when this inevitably got rejected, I gave up.

In 1993, after a brief flirtation with writing books for my kids, I wrote another short story, which I submitted to the Ian St James Award (remember that one?). This one was Highly Commended, the significance of which completely passed me by. I wasn’t encouraged at all by this – in fact, I was extremely disappointed that it didn’t win, because I was convinced that it was utterly, utterly brilliant.

I also joined my local writers’ circle at around this time and managed to write another story (my fourth!), which won one of their internal competitions. After a few desultory attempts, I found a home for this at a magazine called Freelance Informer, which had an acceptance rate somewhere slightly above 50%, but never mind.

I wrote a few more stories during this period, but I was painfully aware that they were already dropping in quality and I gave up fiction altogether around 1995. It wasn’t until ten years later that I found my way back, when I joined the circle again. Two years after that, I found the writing communities on the internet and since then I haven’t really looked back.

I often wonder what would have happened if I’d stuck with writing stories in either 1987 or 1995. Did I just give up too easily? And how come I did manage to stick with it in 2005? What kept me going this time? Certainly, this time around, I found some wonderful support groups to help me stay sane, both in real life – where the Verulam Writers’ Circle had become a lot stronger and more fiction-focused – and online.

But maybe it was simply that this time I was ready. And the other thing, of course, is that even when I wasn’t writing fiction, something inside me had never really given up and was always looking for the chance to get going again.

Painting by Numbers by Tom Gillespie - Book Review

Painting by Numbers is the new novel from Tom Gillespie, previously available on Kindle, and now out in paperback.

To start off with, I need to say. This is a weird book. Now, that may sound like a criticism, but it's really not. I like weird books.

So, you might be asking yourselves, why did I feel the need to mention this? Well, I was expecting a psychological thriller - and I certainly got one of those. What I wasn't expecting was that it would be so... well... weird.

The book opens in Glasgow where our protagonist, Jacob Boyce has become so obsessed with trying to understand the nuances of a particular painting that he is in danger of loosing both his job as an academic and his wife.

His attempts to understand the picture include quite a lot of convincing mathematics (which I suspect is bogus, but it's a testament to Gillespie's research and writing that it seems to make sense, at least as much as anything does in this book) which is actually something I found hugely appealing. As strange lights start to emerge from the canvas, and the figures depicted within start to move, the grounding nature of the maths gives is a solid reality. And I've always been a bit of a science nerd, so it pushes those buttons for me too.

At about a third of the way through, the book changes location to Spain, and most of the book plays out here. I don't want to go into the plot too much, as I don't want to give anything away, but what started as one man's obsession over a painting becomes a kind of demented road-trip, where things get stranger and stranger.

There are, I think, a couple of mis-steps in the book. The comedy interludes in particular - from a police inspector and a bus driver - seem to have been dropped in, and jar somewhat with the overall tone as you read them. But as the book turns more and more weird, even they seem in retrospect to be completely normal.

This is a well-written and gripping book. The character of Boyce is by turns extremely likeable and sympathetic, and then equally strange and disturbed. The description of it as a surreal psychological thriller is an apt one for a book which includes the degeneration of a man's mind and body, art history, space-bending mathematics and free jazz.

It may be weird, but it's my kind of weird. A great book, and well worth a read.


You can pick it up now on Kindle or paperback from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Painting-By-Numbers-Tom-Gillespie/dp/1908910372/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1351106425&sr=1-2

Free 31 Day!

Hello everyone and welcome.

Today is a special day because from 7am today (Friday) until 7am tomorrow (all times BST), I'm giving away free Kindle copies of my flash-fiction collection, 31.

If you are in the UK, the link is
http://www.amazon.co.uk/31-ebook/dp/B007KCXV5M/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1349960792&sr=1-2

If you are elsewhere in the world, just change the .co.uk to .com, .de or whatever, and you can get it there.

Please share the link to this blog, and to the free e-book, and let's see if we can't get it to top the rankings on Amazon.

If you don't have a Kindle, you can download free programs to read Kindles on your computer or phone, from http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200995220

I'm giving it away to promote the fact that plans are starting to be formulated for next year's National Flash-Fiction Day (sign up for the mailing list by emailing nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com) and I wanted to give you some incentive to get involved.

I am also hoping that you will read it, enjoy it, click the 'Like' button on the top of the Amazon page, review it on Amazon, and maybe review it on your own blog or website. Reviews really do generate sales, so if you could do this, I would be really grateful.

Along with all of this, and because there are apparently some people who don't have Kindles (though I'm sure Amazon are working to rectify this oversight!) I am also giving away a free copy of the print version of 31.

Rather than simply holding a random lottery, I thought I would make it a little bit harder, by giving you a quiz. So, below are 6 questions for you to answer. Most of the answers are  somewhere on my website at www.calumkerr.co.uk, so get yourselves over there, have a rummage, and you could be the proud owner of only 3 remaining copies of the original printing of the book.

Email your answers to calum AT calumkerr DOT co DOT uk (replacing the words with the symbols) and I shall pick one lucky winner out of a hat once I have all your correct answers.

So, without further ado, here are the questions:

1. When were the stories in 31 written?
2. On what date was the Kindle version of Undead at Heart published on Amazon?
3. When does my next Flash-Fiction Online course start?
4. At what age did I start writing?
5. Which book did I examine for my York Notes study guide?
6. Which publisher produced Braking Distance?

And that's it. Should be easy enough. Find your answers and email them over with '31 Competition' in the subject line, please. The competition finishes at 7 am (BST) on Saturday 13th October (the same time as the 'free' period on Amazon finishes). And I shall announce the winner here on my blog sometime over the weekend.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy reading and reviewing 31!
Calum

Happy National Poetry Day

Hello there, and Happy National Poetry Day!

As most of you know, I rarely delve into the realm of poetry, leaving that to the more able, but what with it being the Day for it, and with the theme being 'stars', I thought I would share this poem which seems to fit with the theme.

I wrote it a few years ago in a NAWE workshop, lead by Liz Cashdan, . She managed to help me produce something which I think is not half-bad, and it was the first time I'd been able to write about my father, who was ill at the time and passed away soon after.

So, this is for all you poets out there, hope you have a great day.

And this is for my dad.

An Echo

"Have you ever looked at the stars?"

He looks away, even as he speaks.

I ask him what he means

but he says nothing more,

simply walks away

adds gin to his glass,

but not tonic,

and leaves me watching him,

waiting for the next pearl to drop,

like waiting for the next train to pass,

the next beat to sound, or

the next breath to draw.

Instead we talk about my work

and his garden,

my life

and his seedlings,

my beliefs

and his tomatoes.

And yet I remember this:

"Have you ever looked at the stars?"

I remember as he falters.

Waiting for the next beat to sound.

Waiting for the next breath to draw.

Waiting for the end

I remember.

I remember.

"Have you ever looked at the stars?"

and in the silence I turn away

to look at the night sky.

The Potential of Crowd Sourced Funding for Writers - Adam Horovitz

A poet friend of mine, Adam Horovitz, has recently used crowd-sourced funding to raise money to help him with his next collection of poetry. I was fascinated by this possible solution to some of the perils of the funding sector, so asked him for his thoughts.

What do you know about crowd funding? It's a pertinent question in these hard times for arts funding, politically and economically. I discovered it thanks to following the musician Amanda Palmer on Twitter, watching with increasing astonishment and delight as she raised an incredible $1.2 million to fund her latest album, having originally asked for $100,000, claiming that this method of funding was the 'future of music'.

As the year progressed it got harder and harder to be a freelance writer - anyone following that career path will surely know what I mean, although no-one in the creative industry or the job market in general can be finding things that easy at the moment - I began to think that crowd funding might be a useful way to help get myself to the Hawthornden Fellowship I had been offered last year, when things were a little less financially constrained.

I got the fellowship on the back of my first book, Turning, which was published by Headland Publications last year. It offers unconstrained time and silence in a castle in Scotland to write. Trouble was, I was beginning to think that I would have to pass on the opportunity because work was so fragile and hard to come by. Who'd want to sit in silence in a castle not writing because of mortgage worries, after all?

So I went to Sponsume, one of a number of crowd funding websites that have sprung up in the last few years, and set up a campaign to try and buy myself time to work on my second book of poetry.

The beauty of crowd funding is that it takes the funding of artistic ventures right to the heart of the audience who are interested in the art. One is encouraged to offer 'rewards' for people who contribute - in my case, I am offering anything from limited edition postcard poems to a very limited number of private readings to people who contribute.

I have agonised about the naked-making feeling that such an open form of money-raising engenders, and the risk of making oneself look foolish, greedy or just plain arrogant, but have been gratified by the response from many people, some of them friends, some family and some (and this is the most wonderful part for any artist) people one doesn't know who either like the art in question or like the idea of supporting an artist. It is also a wonderful feeling to be able to offer them all something in return.

I don't think crowd-funding is the best way of raising really large amounts of money, unless one has the social networking nous, fanbase and reach of someone like Amanda Palmer, but I do believe it is an excellent way of creating small but potent amounts of money for individual projects and (and this is important) creating publicity for them that is not mired in corporate profit-mongering.

At the Free Verse Book Fair, I had an interesting discussion on the ethics of this sort of fundraising with Adele Ward of Ward Wood Publishing. There was some concern that raising funds for, say, a new anthology of poetry via a company like Sponsume would smack of vanity publishing.

There is a telling difference between crowd funding and vanity publishing, however. With crowd funding, poets included in an anthology can promote it to friends and family via Facebook, email, Twitter and so forth without ever having to fork out a penny, alongside the publisher who should be equally hard at work promoting it, and the people supporting it will get copies of the book as 'rewards' when the funds are raised. If they want to put more money in, these 'rewards' can be increased in desirability by adding limited editions, signed copies and more. What could be better in small press publishing than a publicity-generating pre-ordering system?

Even projects like mine, which are more personal, are viable if it is clear that there are goals in sight. In my case, when I was offered the Hawthornden Fellowship, my publisher perked up and said: "Oh, good! I look forward to seeing the next manuscript!". Without that in mind, I would have felt much more uncomfortable about setting up the campaign.

I also equivocated early on about the ethics of such a project on Facebook and was gratified when the poet Jon Stone fired back with the comment (and I'm paraphrasing a little, as it's hard to find the exact comment immediately on Facebook's clumsy Timeline): "I'd rather see 100 poets funded for a month's retreat than one poet funded for a lifetime's career".

It's this attitude that makes crowd funding exciting for me - the possibility that many people who might not find it easy to get a creative project off the ground, given the bureaucratic hoops one is expected to jump through with big funding bodies, could find that they suddenly have the time (with a little careful thought and a fair amount of work sat at the computer gritting their teeth and promoting it) to do something marvellous with the support of family, friends and people interested in their art.

As my campaign draws to a close, I realise that the process has been somewhat akin to the feeling I get when I test a new poem out on front of an audience for the first time. There are nerves, palpitations, the worry that it might not be liked. I have noticed and edited out flaws as I have gone along, and made the campaign stronger. It seems to have gone down reasonably well this time. I might try it again some time, but not for quite a while.

Before that, I want other campaigns to come to life. I want to see more writers and creators of all sorts getting their ideas out there and promoting them. Crowd funding may not be the future of arts funding (joyous though Amanda Palmer's hyperbole was to watch), but I think it could and should play a large part in that future.

I will certainly be looking out for good campaigns to support as and where I can when I get back from Hawthornden. More power to your crowd-funding elbows!

To take a look at Adam Horovitz's Sponsume campaign, or even donate if one of the 'rewards' tickles your fancy, click on this link: http://www.sponsume.com/project/help-send-poet-hawthornden-fellowship-0

Adam Horovitz is a poet and journalist. Born in London in 1971, he was raised in Gloucestershire. He was poet in residence for Glastonbury Festival's official website in 2009, was voted onto the Hospital Club 100 as an 'emerging talent' in 2010 and is a 2012 Hawthornden Fellow. His first collection, Turning, was published in 2011.