Did he do well?

December the 20th already?! Must be time to take stock of the year, look forward to the next one, and post one of my sporadic blog entries!

So, what's been happening since I last waffled to you? Well, I had a list in my last entry, let's see how I did:

30 flash365 stories for November - I was planning to write these early to lighten my load. It didn't happen. However, the stories which did emerge were, I think, amongst my best yet. I managed to write a whole series of linked stories which were both stand-alone and a single piece. The whole collection is currently with a fabulous publisher and I hope will come out as a pamphlet sometime next year. So, you know, that's okay.

I then found I had to write all of December's stories early. All 31 were done before the 9th December. This was so they could be passed on to the BBC who are going to broadcast 15 or so of them. So, if you want to hear them, they will be on Radio 4 at 5.30pm on Christmas Eve, read by Rory Kinnear, Emelia Fox, Kenneth Cranham and Diana Rigg! (The podcast will be up after the broadcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ipm)

30 days of NaNoWriMo novel writing (1,667 words a day) - nah, never happened. I decided it was just one too many things to try and do. Next year, maybe. Though I have other novel plans in the pipeline. More on that below.

start work on the rewrites for my York Notes - started, yes, and got good feedback from the editor that I am on the right lines. Then I stopped to do all the other things I had to do. Need to restart soon as they all have to be done by 15th Jan. But, you know, there was this blog to write and - ooh, squirrel!

mark student work which will start arriving soon - this has taken up most of the last 6 weeks. It's quite ridiculous really. Still, there was some really good work in there, including an essay to which I gave one of my highest marks ever. That's always a pleasure.

continue promoting National Flash Fiction Day including building a website and running a competition - This carried on, and the website was finally built. It's up at http://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/ if you fancy a look. Of course, with something like this, the workload grows, so I currently find myself putting together an Arts Council bid, as you do.

read the entries for the new edition of Word Gumbo and put the issue together - managed this, late but in earnest. And, I have to say, it's a great issue. Why not have a read: http://gumbopress.co.uk/wordgumbo.html

pay a visit to Manchester at the end of the month to read at Bad Language - This was a great event. It was fab to be back in Manchester with all my friends. Being upstaged by David Gaffney and Sarah-Clare Conlon was dispiriting but expected. Still, I think Lucy Burkhampton went down well.

submit stories, as per usual - This also went by the board. However, with November's stories being considered for a pamphlet and December's being broadcast on Radio 4, I don't feel too bad about this. Still, with the Christmas break now upon me, I'm hoping to get a whole bunch sent out.

teach - yep.

and finally, live - this did happen, occasionally, and I need, as ever, to thank Kath for her support, and for making those moments of life so good! And, of course, to Milo, without whom my life would be a dark, dank, stinking hole.

Anyway, that wasn't what I was planning to blog about at all. I was going to do so much more... Ah well, I think I'll drop this coin in the fountain, and write another one. You know, the one I actually planned to write... So, don't go anywhere, I'll be back in a minute.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Just Sounded its Horn

I've just been looking ahead to what I have planned for November. It looks like this:

• 30 flash365 stories
• 30 days of NaNoWriMo novel writing (1,667 words a day)
• start work on the rewrites for my York Notes
• mark student work which will start arriving soon
• continue promoting National Flash Fiction Day including building a website and running a competition
• read the entries for the new edition of Word Gumbo and put the issue together
• pay a visit to Manchester at the end of the month to read at Bad Language
• submit stories, as per usual
• teach
• and finally, live

I'm starting to think I may be attempting to munch more than is possible.

So, I hear you ask, what am I going to do about it?

Well, there is one thing in there which is not November-critical. It's not what you might expect, though. It's my daily flash365 story.

You see, the promise for flash365 is to publish a story every day, not that it has to have been written on that day. And, I will be doing NaNo every day so it's not like I'll be taking a month off.

Also, the plan for November is a series of linked stories all set in the same location at the same time. As such, it would be great to write them all before the first is posted, then there can be forward links as well as backwards ones.

So, there's my plan. I'm going to try and write 38 flash fictions in 8 days. It sounds insane, I know, but if I can do it then November has a chance to become that little more manageable.

Okay, off I go. Wish me luck!

Hello again

Well, I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted an entry on here. That said, it has been one hell of a month.

As per my last post, I did actually start the flash365 project. Not only that but I've been keeping it up. Yesterday I posted my 32nd story, and I'm on course for today's. So that, of course, has been taking up some time.

On top of that, May was Word Gumbo month, in which we read through all the submissions for the first issue of Gumbo Press's online magazine. Once the pieces were sorted, biographies had to be gathered, and the more fearsome task of soliciting editorials from the editors. After that the mere act of type-setting was a walk in the park.

What else? Well, I've done about half a dozen different readings in both the north and the south of the country, promoting 31, which is still selling well and gathering lots of feedback.

Oh, and I've been teaching my classes and doing my marking too.

Busy, enough, you'd think. But I've also been doing other writing - completing one and a half longer short stories (it was meant to be 15 rather than 1.5, but ah well, even I can't do everything!), coming up with a couple of ideas for novels to attempt writing in the summer, planning my conference paper for Great Writing in two weeks, getting a few more stories into print and preparing to move the length of the country.

So, is that a good enough excuse for not blogging? No? Well, I'm sorry and I'll make sure it doesn't happen again!

Now, I'm afraid I have to head off. I have things to do, probably.

Flash... aha! (again)

I have a new project. When I announced it my Bugged and Gumbo Press colleague, Jo Bell, commented that I obviously wasn't busy enough. It's not true, I'm as busy with writing related activities as I've ever been, but this project just seemed like too good an idea to pass up.

So, last week I announced it, and this Sunday - May 1st - I will start and publish a new flash-fiction every day for a year. The project will appear on a blog at flash365.blogspot.com and you can also follow it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/flash365.

But why, you may be asking, am I taking this on if I'm so busy?

Well, the whole experience of doing 31 left me with a hankering to take on a similar project - partly because I find writing flash-fiction such fun and so satisfying - but also because the forced nature of the daily deadline really helped me get on with my writing.

The other thing I found, however, was that writing flash-fiction worked as a perfect way to get the writing engine turning over. In a previous post I talked about how hard I was finding it getting in to writing longer stories. Writing flash will actually help by getting those muscles up and running. I might also be able to get to my novel rewriting, and starting a new novel idea I've had.

Another reason, of course, is the advice we give to writers that that should write every day. It is the only certain way to improve. What better way to force yourself to do it than announcing it to the world, and publishing the stories online, leaving yourself open to public ridicule if you fail?

Of course, it will also help me to build up a huge bank of stories that can be submitted (to places that accept stories that have been previously published on blogs, of course).

Finally, I need to mention that part of the inspiration was the project started by Max Wallis, Something Every Day, in which he wrote... well... something every day. Not only did he get a great way to practice his craft, but built up a following and got himself noticed at the same time. I would be lying if I said I didn't hope that flash365 would raise my profile, and bring me new readers. It's what every writer wants, after all.

So, please visit the Facebook page and 'like' it, follow the blog, and, if you can, spare me a thought as I head off into the coming year.

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow...

Well, if you've been keeping up, you know that I've been a busy old bee. Selling the book and working on Gumbo Press have taken up a lot of my time - along with the usual round of teaching/marking/living etc.

It's now fewer than four weeks since its arrival, and the first edition of 31 has all but sold out (2 copies left, if you're interested... Buy online now!). This was at least partly thanks to the interest of the audience at the Bugged reading who bought all the copies I had with me. I have other readings coming up, so have ordered a second edition. The first of these readings is my customary visit to the Bad Language at the end of April, but this will be followed by two guest slots - one for a writing group in Oldham and another for an open-mic evening in Cheshire, and a couple of other possible appearances, about which more as I have it.

As if these weren't enough, Gumbo Press has been taking off. The website has been built, designed and redesigned. Exciting ideas have been formulated and, as of writing, we already have over 40 submissions with 11 days still to go before the deadline. Winning Words asked me to write a blog entry for them about it, which will hopefully help promote the first issue of the magazine.

In the midst of all this, and my return to teaching at Winchester next week, I have taken on another project. Crazy? Me? Possibly.

Following on from the success of CalFlaWriMo, without which 31 wouldn't exist at all, I have decided to do something similar, but with longer stories. So, my latest plan is to write 15 brand new short stories (not flashes) of no less than 1500 words each, before the end of May. It may kill me, but it's got to be worth a go.

I started the first one on Friday, 15th April. It was a story which had been working around in my mind for a while, so I had a pretty fair idea of how it was going to go on the page. I was wrong.

I have obviously got so used to the quick fix that is flash-fiction, that the mental muscles that work on the longer form of the full short story have atrophied. It took me over 4 hours to get the first 1000 words done. I knew the story, but a combination of old-fashioned resistance, being daunted by the task, and just trying to remember how to write one of the damn things, held me back. I realised, as I struggled with it, how much more you can put into a short story, but also how much more you HAVE to put into a short story. In a flash, character, setting, even plot, can be implied rather than described. In a short story, all of these elements have to be there in actuality, but you also have to keep them short, and to the point. Just as with a flash, there is no room for spare words. Every single one has to serve the story, but in a longer story, the job of picking your way through them is so much harder.

Anyway, long story short (no pun intended), I crested the half way point and picked up speed as I came down the other side. The story ended up at around 2700 words, with the last 1700 only taking 1 hour. Job done, one down, fourteen to go.

This morning, I sat down to write the next one. This was based on another idea which I have also been mulling over for a while. I thought it might be easier, but no. The resistance kicked in, and this time I have ground to a halt after little more than 150 words. There was even an hour break as I tried to find the right name for my character, without which I couldn't complete the first sentence.

Maybe I'm trying to hard. Maybe I have too much else on my plate to tackle this at the moment. Maybe the deadline is just too far off and the panicky adrenaline hasn't arrived yet. Whatever, I'm not going to give up. My goal with this project is to make my brain and my spirit bend to my will, so that writing one of these stories starts to feel as easy as writing a flash. And I guess that's why I'm doing it.

So, wish me well. And if you see me at a reading, and I look tired and lost, just leave me, I'll be fine.

Phew

Well, it's been nearly two weeks since my last blog post, and what a two weeks it has been. My book arrived, as you know, and it's been selling well, but I've also gone ahead with a plan which has been at the back of my mind for a while, and set up a small press. I've also been doing the marking and teaching that comes along at the end of a semester as well as sending stories out etc. etc. It's been a busy couple of weeks but very rewarding.

In my last post I talked about the book, and my reasons for doing it - as well as my fears and hopes. It's been out for two weeks now and I've sold a little over half the print run, and feedback is proving very positive. I was particularly pleased with the comments I received from Cathy Bryant (a poet who's wonderfully titled book, Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature, came out last year). She said

Such a treat... I was reading it thinking ah, so this is what good flash fiction is like. These should have won prizes and been lauded to the skies... The best and most energetic book of flash I've read for aeons!'

Does it get any better than that? It certainly helped to calm my fears over the audacity of self-publishing to know that I was doing something that others would consider to be good work.

As a result of the feedback, and the speed with which this edition is selling (plus the fact that a number of proof-reading errors have been spotted by eagle-eyed readers which need fixing), I started to think about a second edition. And, I decided, this time it needed to have an ISBN number so that it could be listed on Amazon and ordered from bookshops. It also - I was advised by a colleague - needed to issue from a 'press' rather than just myself.

I can see the need for that. I won't hide behind the press, but it removes my name explicitly from the copyright page and makes the whole thing look a little more professional. However, with the way my mind works, it wasn't enough to simply invent a name and go for it. I started thinking about setting up a real small press.

The thing is, I used to be a publisher. From 1997-2004 I ran CK Publishing. We produced the Writer's Muse magazine (still in existence, and run by my friend and colleague, Jim Palmer) and a number of chapbooks, anthologies, and trade paperbacks. That company moved out of books and into websites and became WebGuild Media, another company that still exists. I left there in 2008 to concentrate full-time on teaching and writing, but ever since CK Publishing's demise, I have been toying with the idea of getting back into the business in some way.

This seemed like the perfect opportunity. Both I and the world are in different places than we were when I set up the last company. With the wonders of blogs and Facebook, it's much easier to spread the word and get people to submit. And with the network of writers I have developed, it's also easier to get supporters for your project.

So, last Sunday, after thinking through some - but by no means all - of the issues, I announced the birth of Gumbo Press, and then started setting it up. Along with my partner, Kath Lloyd, the poet Jo Bell, and my friend and colleague from the Writer's Muse, Mike Somers, we are now putting together how the whole thing is going to work.

Suffice it to say, there will be an e-zine featuring writing in all its forms, and we plan to move into chapbooks and anthologies as time goes on. Competitions, events, and other things we haven't even thought of yet will join the mix. It's a lot of work, but so exciting, and with 76 followers on Facebook in less than a week, hopefully a success.

Tonight I'm back reading with Jo for a Bugged event (with a few copies of 31 floating around too, perhaps) and in a couple of weeks I'm back at Bad Language (who have selected one of the 31 stories for their next anthology) to read and promote the book there as well.

So, anyway, that was my two weeks. What have you been up to?