Still here

Sometimes I feel as though I have to have some BIG ANNOUNCEMENT before blogging, when really this should be more of a writing-life-as-it-goes blog.

Which means a lot of rejections, but I suspect that topic has been done to death recently.

My poem ‘Orpah’s Lament’, published in Gutter 8, is now available over at Receiving Notes from Mythical Women. I recommend you stick around and check out the previous Notes.

Weirdly, I don’t have any poems in the publication pipeline (unless you count one accepted over a year ago for an anthology I suspect isn’t going to happen, but that had already been published so it isn’t as though the poem has been kept off the market in the meantime). This isn’t for lack of trying. I currently have 43 submissions out – well, 42, since I just picked up a rejection for Poetry Pamphlet #2 and need to log it. Oops, I guess I just blogged about rejection again.

(One of those things everyone does and no one ever talks about – keeping track of your submissions. I should blog about that….)

Still going along

Mostly with rejections. For a while I think I was averaging one a day, and since they come from all different angles (literary agents, writing-related jobs/residencies, competitions, and just general bread-and-butter submissions), it’s sometimes hard to find a refuge.

Good news today: I’ve had a short story highly commended in the Writers’ Forum fiction competition. I did hope to win, of course, but I’m in the sort of mood where even a near-miss is cause for celebration. *tentatively throws a handful of confetti*

*Thundercat attacks the confetti*

This is why my carpet *always* needs to be vacuumed. Seriously, I think little bitz of fuzz just commit random acts of mitosis when I’m not around.

Anyway, Lipstick is Always a Plus got a nice review as part of a Stewed Rhubarb group review, over at Poetry Scotland – you can read all the reviews here. I’m getting the “a good line in stories, well-told’ line printed up on stickers to be used as a cover blurb. Not many people take the time to review poetry pamphlets (thanks, Sally!) so I like to promote the ones who do.

Meanwhile, I’m reading (along with many many others) at Bletherskites: a Scottish performance poetry spectacular on Sunday 7 April. Starting time 3pm at the Jazz Bar. Come for the poetry, stay for the jazz.

Book group in Paris

I love talking to book groups. They ask interesting questions (though I think none will ever surpass the eight-year-old’s query of whether I’m friends with Enid Blyton). They generally think I am awesome and want to know more about me. They buy my book, and they read it.

I have to say, when I thought about all the fame and glamour that came with being a writer [joke], I didn’t actually have book groups in mind, but I’ve visited three now – in three different countries – and I’ve loved every one.

Here’s the photographic evidence of my most recent book group, with some of the amazing women of the AAWE Paris:

What does a writer do? – using only the ten hundred most used words

There’s a Thing going round on the Internet which is this: can you explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? It’s not very easy.

Here’s mine:

I make up stories by writing words on paper or typing them on a computer. (It changes because sometimes I feel like writing words in different ways.)

The words need to make sense in the order I put them in, and when people read those words they should have a picture in their mind of what the story is about. It’s okay if people get a slightly different picture than I did, because words shouldn’t just mean one thing. But when people don’t understand the stories it might be because I wrote the words in a confusing way. This means I sometimes have to write the words over and over again in different ways before I can say, yes, this is a good story.

Sometimes my words make people angry. That might sound bad, but it’s okay to make people angry with your words! You are making them think carefully about your stories. That is always a good thing.

Most of the time, no one gives me any money to write stories, but I do it anyway because I love doing it. I love it even when a lot of people tell me “sorry, but these words are not very good.” Sometimes two or three people tell me that in a single day. Sometimes they tell me that even though I gave them money to read my words! Then I cry and hug my cat and say, “well, who needs to write words anyway? Stupid words.”

But it feels great when people say, “we love these words and want to put them in our book” or “we love these words and here is some money so you can write more stories”.

Sometimes, instead of writing the words, I stand up in front of people and say them out loud. This can feel even worse because the people who say “we don’t like these words” are right there in front of me. But at least they are usually nice to me after I say the words even if they don’t like them. When people like the words I say, they are happy, and I like that a lot. I don’t usually get money for this, either.

When I do get money for writing words, I buy books, because as much as I love to write words, I love reading the words other people wrote, too.

Blue Monday

The snow is lovely, but it only stuck for less than a day and now anything that flakes down simply vanishes. At the moment, my windows are so clogged up with condensation that it could be raining men, goblins, or jelly beans out there and I wouldn’t notice. Everything I do gets rejected, and even when I spend £15 on the entry fee and £7 on postage, they can’t even bother to send a form email to tell me so. I haven’t written anything for weeks, and this editing project which has literally been happening on and off for over a decade is in yet another ‘final’ phase. NO ONE APPRECIATES MY GENIUS. Or my cupcakes, which are in a tin beside me and no one is eating them. Which I baked because a) my flat is cold (see ‘snow’, supra) and b) it meant I didn’t have to go back to the editing just then.

(Or now, because a blog post counts as writing. Right?)

So I keep doing what I can, because eventually something is going to work out. And, of course, there are plenty of things happening. I just got a request to write another blog entry – this one in relation to the workshop I’m leading at the Scottish Poetry Library next month. I’m putting together a blurb for a reading in May, part of a much larger series of events about literature and medicine in Edinburgh. The Stewed Rhubarb launch for their next three pamphlets – one of them being Lipstick is Always a Plus – has a date, and may soon have a venue.

And, well, someday the editing will be done.

And so will January, which may not be the cruellest month, but it sure does get dark early.

NaReLeMo – final results

The final count: 26 rejections in 30 days.

Here’s the thing: rejection hurts and all that, but if you don’t play, you can’t possibly win. Of course you occasionally read about people who win major poetry competitions with their first ever submission, because it happens, but more often than not, the contest winners/published poets/grant awardees have been sending out dozens if not hundreds of entries/submissions/applications. I could probably crunch the numbers on my lifetime acceptance/rejection stats, and it would be depressing reading if you only focused on the rejections, but when you look at the good stuff, well, that’s not too shabby.

Many and many a year ago, in a city by the sea, I won a Fulbright scholarship. To this day I can hardly think about the phone call which told me I’d won without starting to hyperventilate out of sheer joy (as I did at the time). When I was able to breathe again, I went back over my list of grant applications for the previous few years and found that I’d applied for something like 40, and had won a couple of tiny things here and there, but mostly they were rejections. Even the dippy little local ones which couldn’t have had many entries. If you’d looked at my rejection list, you’d have thought I was hopeless.

But here’s another thing: selection committees and editorial boards don’t see your rejections. They only see what you’ve placed in front of them. And sometimes, when the stars align and someone thinks ‘hey, this is awesome’, then there no rejection to be found.

Thanks for playing along. Maybe next year I’ll try something easy, like NaNoWriMo.

The final list:

1. Science Fiction Poetry Association
2. Scottish Book Trust Writers in Schools
3. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit
4. Folkestone Writers Short Story Competition
5. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit sub #2
6. Neon Magazine
7. The Ilanot Review
8. A-Minor Magazine
9. Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition
10. Thrush Poetry Journal
11. Counterexample Poetics
12. Mobius: The Journal of Social Change
13. A grant for foreign travel
14. SmokeLong Quarterly
15. Choc-Lit Short Story Competition
16. Lancelot Andrewes Awards (Southwark Cathedral Poetry Competition 2012)
17. Foundling Review
18. Redheaded Stepchild
19. An artistic symposium
20. Agent query
21. Dragon’s Pen at the Glasgow Women’s Library
22. Troubadour International Poetry Prize
23. Flash Fiction competition, Book Week Scotland (but my entry can be read in the image 3 pdf)
24. The Pedestal Magazine
25. The Helen Schaible sonnet contest
26. Agent query

NaReLeMo – Day 27 – nearly done

Well, I’m not going to ‘win’ but that’s partly because I had a couple of acceptances, so I shall not be too sad…. One of the nice things about this month has been that charting rejections means I haven’t been entirely glum about them. I mean, sure, there were plenty where I was spluttering ‘but but but I worked REALLY HARD on that and I made ALL SORTS OF GOOD POINTS about why I should win that grant and WHAT DID I DO WRONG?’

And then I said, oh well, at least I get to put another entry on the list!

(I am very fond of lists.)

Also, as is sadly the case, sometimes you don’t do anything wrong. Sometimes they have 7000 poetry submissions every year and they only take 150. (Such are the stats for Other Poetry – which, I am thrilled to say, took one of my sonnets a few days ago!) Sometimes the funding runs out. There are too many variables you can’t control.

But I am sounding as though I am wrapping up the month, and I am not, because there are still three whole days to be rejected in. Here’s the current list, and I’ll be back for the final showdown.

New entries in bold:

1. Science Fiction Poetry Association
2. Scottish Book Trust Writers in Schools
3. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit
4. Folkestone Writers Short Story Competition
5. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit sub #2
6. Neon Magazine
7. The Ilanot Review
8. A-Minor Magazine
9. Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition
10. Thrush Poetry Journal
11. Counterexample Poetics
12. Mobius: The Journal of Social Change
13. A grant for foreign travel
14. SmokeLong Quarterly
15. Choc-Lit Short Story Competition
16. Lancelot Andrewes Awards (Southwark Cathedral Poetry Competition 2012)
17. Foundling Review
18. Redheaded Stepchild
19. An artistic symposium
20. Agent query
21. Dragon’s Pen at the Glasgow Women’s Library
22. Troubadour International Poetry Prize
23. Flash Fiction competition, Book Week Scotland (but my entry can be read in the image 3 pdf)

The Next Big Thing

We take a break from NaReLeMo (don’t worry, there are plenty more rejections to be blogged about) for this meme.

It’s this lovely thing going around the writingblogosphere, which is a list of questions about your next project. You answer said questions and then tag some number of other people to answer them. At this point, I’ve been asked three times and tagged at least twice, so I think this is tapping out a la pyramid schemes, but it’s the nicest pyramid scheme in the world, so I’m happy to play along.

I was tagged by Pippa Goldschmidt and Harry Giles, both excellent poets.

And now: The Next Big Thing!

What is the working title of your next book?
Lipstick is Always a Plus, which was published last month by Stewed Rhubarb Press.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
I was awarded a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust (huzzah!), and my project was my first full-length poetry collection (which is currently under consideration). After I pulled that together, I had lots of other poems that were good enough to publish in a book, but which hadn’t fit into the full-length collection. I was definitely at the point where I needed a pamphlet to sell at poetry readings, so I decided to use some of the remaining poems to create a smaller collection. There are a few crossover poems with the full-length collection, but this has quite a few poems that I consider more ‘performance’ pieces, and the narrative arc is distinct, so this isn’t just a miniature version.

What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry, debut collection.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
No idea! Maybe it could be a dramatised reading, with a classically-trained actress.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
From emptiness to joy, with hot chocolate and lipstick.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It’s published by Stewed Rhubarb Press, a new press which focuses on performance poets.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I started concentrating on poetry in the autumn of 2009, and all but one of the poems in this collection are from this period. Individual poems usually take several days to a few weeks.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Other first pamphlets, probably! The Stewed Rhubarb line – which contains four other pamphlets at the moment, with many more to come – is pretty dynamic, so I’m happy to be part of this group.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
There were a few people who prompted some of the poems, as the dedication section makes clear (though most of the inspiration remains behind the curtain). Then Rachel and James at Stewed Rhubarb pulled out the narrative from the heap of individual poems I handed them. So in a way, the collection itself was a collaborative effort.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s mostly a love story, but the narrative includes a contribution from the Turing machine.

…and this is the point where I am supposed to tag people, but I think everyone has already been tagged! So I’ll namecheck fellow authors Halsted Bernard and Caroline Dunford, and the entire Stewed Rhubarb crowd.

NaReLeMo – Day 19 – mixed bag

Sometimes it feels like you can’t get the dinkiest success, and then something big drops into your lap. I suppose there are various reasons for that. I haven’t had a poem accepted in nearly three months, and then last week I had a major writing-related acceptance. But I’m still getting a boatload of rejections, because that is how it works.

The book launch went splendidly – I love book launches; they’re kind of like wedding receptions in that you have lots of people from various points of your life all gathered together to say how lovely you are, and you can hand out candy (in my case, candy lipstick). Unlike weddings, you can wear a dress that isn’t a one-off outfit. In my case, it was a dress which had a rabbit on the front. Not a real rabbit, of course, much as Thundercat would have loved that. (Thundercat once, when allowed outdoor access, dragged home half a rabbit. The back half. Freshly killed, but we were never clear by whom. SO ANNOYED when I took it away, in spite of all the ‘good kitty!’ accolades.)

Anyway, here’s the latest NaReLeMo update. I just received an email from a residency which I’d been expecting to hear back on – turns out some of their emails never made it through, so they were chasing up who’d heard what. I expect there will therefore be a 19th rejection on the list by close of day….

Updated rejection list, 19 November:

1. Science Fiction Poetry Association
2. Scottish Book Trust Writers in Schools
3. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit
4. Folkestone Writers Short Story Competition
5. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit sub #2
6. Neon Magazine
7. The Ilanot Review
8. A-Minor Magazine
9. Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition
10. Thrush Poetry Journal
11. Counterexample Poetics
12. Mobius: The Journal of Social Change
13. A grant for foreign travel
14. SmokeLong Quarterly
15. Choc-Lit Short Story Competition
16. Lancelot Andrewes Awards (Southwark Cathedral Poetry Competition 2012)
17. Foundling Review
18. Redheaded Stepchild

NaReLeMo – day 12 – parity!

It’s day 12 and I have twelve rejections. I am not sure I am going to ‘win’, as I’ve just checked my list of submissions, and I only have eight things currently out that are definitely being decided in November.

However, something I didn’t expect to hear about for a month just sent me a response. And it was an acceptance. One of the really awesome, fantastic acceptances that only happen once every few years (if you’re lucky) and make you glad you didn’t check your phone in the meeting because you can’t stop giggling. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about that one yet!

I’m doing several events between now and the end of November, so here’s a list of those, followed by the updated rejection list. Everything’s in Edinburgh. I am more than happy to read elsewhere, of course. Every event below is free. Hope to see you at some or all.

Monday 12 November: Blind Poetics, 8pm at the Blind Poet.

Wednesday 14 November: the launch of Lipstick is Always a Plus, 7pm at Pulp Fiction.

Friday 23 November: Take Tea With Turing, ‘an anthology of creative work inspired by Alan Turing, compiled and edited by the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh writer-in-residence, Viccy Adams. From poems read by robots to comedy twitter-based animations, let these new words bring insight into Turing’s life and legacy.’ Part of the West Port Book Festival, 7pm at Inspace.

Wednesday 28 November: Poetry reading, A little world within itself -
‘Peter Riley (Cambridge), Kei Miller (from Jamaica, based in Glasgow) and Tracey S. Rosenberg (from the USA, based in Edinburgh) read from their work in an evening of poetries that chime with themes of human geography in the Galápagos exhibition.’ At the Fruitmarket Gallery. Part of Book Week Scotland.

Updated rejection list, 12 November:

1. Science Fiction Poetry Association
2. Scottish Book Trust Writers in Schools
3. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit
4. Folkestone Writers Short Story Competition
5. The Carson Prize/Mixed Fruit sub #2
6. Neon Magazine
7. The Ilanot Review
8. A-Minor Magazine
9. Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition
10. Thrush Poetry Journal
11. Counterexample Poetics
12. Mobius: The Journal of Social Change