Can you compete in writing?

In running it's obvious. The first person to cross the finishing line is the winner. It's neither subjective or objective. It's logic.

With writing it's a little bit different. The person who judges your work needs to feel some kind of connection, and even if she/he is trying to be objective it's about personal taste.

At the moment I'm planning to send work to the following competitions/live events:

*Are you sitting comfortably? Live Lit Event/Pyjama Party in the Basement Brighton. The topic is midsummer, and I've written a story about a guy feeling lost at Stonehenge called RELAX JOHNNY-BOY, HAVE SOME FUN. Deadline: 5th June, max 1000 words.

*Guardian Weekend Short Story Competition. I've written a story on the required summer theme about a father daughter relationship called THE HATS WE WEAR. Deadline: 18 June, max 2000 words.

*SPARKS 10, Live lit event, first Tue in July??? Open theme. Written a story called TOUCH ME LIKE YOU WOULD TOUCH HIM. Deadline: 22 June???, max 1000 words.

*Bridport Prize Open theme. I've written a story called CLEANING IN LINGERIE. Deadline: 30 June, max 5000 words. (Am also submitting a piece called HOW ENGLISH WORKS for the flash fiction competition, max 250 words.)

**Waterstones Quarterly Magazine Perfectly Formed Short Story Competition Is only open for unpublished writers, but I don't know if being published in Sweden will count, have emailed and asked, but no reply, so I'm sending them a story anyway, called LOVERS OF THE PLANET (that I originally wrote for a Short Fuse night). Deadline: 1 July, max 2000 words.

*Short Fuse Erotic Fiction Night, Live Event at Komedia 18 July. Don't know if I'm submitting anything yet ... Deadline: 9 July, max 2500 words.

*Short Fuse appearing at Edge of the Sea festival. Theme: write a story that is inspired by a song title by The Wedding Present. I picked I AM FROM FURTHER NORTH THAN YOU. Deadline: 10 July, max 2500 words.

So I actually have six stories on the go. Most of them are finished, or at least drafted. I just need some feedback so I can re-work them if necessary. (Which is almost always the case, another pair of eyes is invaluable!) I have a few regular people who kindly are helping me out, but I'm always in need of more eyes, so if one of the titles grab you let me know if you are willing to read and give feedback. I'll also announce each individual story on Facebook nearer the time. And if anyone reading this is planning to submit to above competitions/events or other places I'm happy to help you out with feedback in return.

I don't think you can compete in writing, or in any creative practise. It's so individual. Yet if you don't play you can't win ... One thing that's good with competitions is that I feel more motivated to finish a story and make it as good as I can.

Talking about competing ... Yesterday I went to Hanover Poetry Festival*, hosted by the brilliant Young Hanoverians, and at the end of the night they had a Poetry Slam (hosted by Hammer&Tongue's Rosy Carrick), that I somewhat reluctantly took part in. The poets get scored (points between 0.0 to 10.0) and are judged by quality of poetry, performance and audience reaction. If you are going to take part in slam you have to take it for what it is, and not be upset if you get low scores. It's not a valid judgment whether you're good or not - it's just what some individuals were thinking at the time. Same with written pieces ... just because you don't win a competition doesn't mean your story is bad. It could just be the judge being in a bad mood and didn't want to read a story about a woman killing her dog or whatever it is you've written. And you'll never know how close you were. That's the good thing I guess compared to say running. You'll know that you're the last person crossing the finishing line ...


*I had some cool pics, but lost my camera ... Probably when dancing in the Engine Rooms in the early hours of morning. The person who took it is probably having fun, seeing pics of people on stage making funny faces ...

Sparkling stories at SPARKS

The first time I went to the live short fiction event SPARKS upstairs at Three & Ten in Brighton I thought wow these writers are really good and it's really cool that a photo has been commissioned to go with each story; I wish it was me up on the stage ...

Yesterday that wish came true. I was quite nervous as I've never read a short story on stage before. When performing poetry I memorise all my lines and feel in control; somehow I find it more nerve-wracking having to read something from a piece of paper - especially as I've got this fear of pronouncing the words wrong. Another fear was that I would have to read my story, STEAL FROM THE RICH AND GIVE TO THE POOR, in front of a picture of a nipple as my story features a woman who's lost a nipple to a drunk plastic surgeon ... Luckily the photographer had chosen another scene from the story - a girl writing in a cafe.

SPARKS is a friendly event - hosted by the welcoming and charismatic Jo Mortimer - and I always appreciate talking to other writers and hearing their work. When cycling home along the sea my head was full of story snippets: (love?) notes hanging from a tree, bloody feet in rubber boots, a hotel room in Cairo, a lizard in a mouth, a person suffering from seasonal affective disorder, a mother preparing herself for something difficult ... you name it!

***

Today I had some bad and good news. My story LOVERS OF THE PLANET was not accepted for the next Short Fuse event at Komedia (Wed 14 April), but the good news is that I was really, really close to having my story chosen. The only problem seemed to be that it was a bit too long as they need a variety of short and long stories for the evening. So it's not really bad news at all - I'm actually really happy. It also mean that I can go to Bernadette Cremin's official launch of Miming Silence at Iambic Theatre that happens the same night. As if that wasn't enough the Are you sitting comfortably? short story event at the Basement is happening the same evening as well ... Brighton is great! The choice of three good events in one evening is amazing compared to one half good event every other month in my hometown ... But I think I'll have to write a story soon about being able to be in three places at the same time ...

Photo: Saskia Wesnigk-Wood . Big thanks also to Tim who videoed the whole event.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Yesterday my short story "Foxy Lady" was read out by actor Gareth Brierley at White Rabbit's live lit event Are you sitting comfortably? at the Basement in Brighton.

It was a surreal experience hearing somebody else reading my story, as if it was not mine. I thought "oh, I've read that somewhere before, I recognise it." Gareth did a good interpretation and the audience seemed to like it.

The other writers were: Glen Stevens, Denis Doran, David Patchett,Erika Szostak, Joe Ralley and Jules Craig. The topic for the evening was "secrets", so in every story there was some kind of revelation. There was also a confession box in the room where you could post your darkest secret. The best one won a prize and it turned out to be a girl called Kate who had puked in a cup at Glastonbury, selling it for £1 to a passer-by, saying it was soup ...

I really liked the concept of the evening with free cakes and teapot cocktails (not free.). Next event is in April and the topic is Magic. Here's info if you want to submit a story.

I also had some more good news yesterday ... another short story of mine, "Steal from the rich and give to the poor" was accepted for another live lit event: SPARKS on April the 6th upstairs at the Three and Ten in Kemp Town. And this time I'll read it myself ... Thanks to Tim, Brian and Saksia for feedback!

Change of Scene

I've been part of the Brighton Poetry Scene since 2004. I've been a regular at nights such as Brighton Poetry Society's Open Mic, Hammer & Tongue Slam, Floetics, Horseplay, Wordplay and of course Poets Cornered meetings. I've also done special gigs like Brighton&Hove Peace Festival, Shoreham Beer, Cider & Literature Festival, The Bass Festival, All arts Fiesta, The Poetry Marathon Poets Corner Festival etc. I've had a good time and made lots of friends.

Yet, after five years I've realised that it's bloody hard becoming a professional poet, even semi-professional. You constantly have to suck up to other people in order to get gigs and it's even harder to get poetry published. I'm torn between being a "stage poet" and a "page poet". There are few people who can really pull it off, being good both on stage and page, like Bernadette Cremin and Ros Barber.

What I want to say with this blog post is not that I'm going to stop performing or stop writing poetry, but I'm not going to dedicate as much time to poetry as I used to. It feels like I wrote my best poems and did my best performances 2-3 years ago, and since then I haven't really developed. To become better a poet I need to put in a lot of work: courses, training, studying etc. If I'd put as much effort into poetry and performing as I have put into my novels I'd be a "big star" by now :), but it's hard to succeed in more than one area.

Mainly I'm a novelist and I'm better at writing prose than poetry. I've recently discovered that there's quite a good live scene for short fiction in Brighton with events such as Short Fuse, Sparks, Are you sitting Comfortably? and the former Tight Lip. So I'll cut down on going to poetry events and focus more on the short fiction scene.

It's scary though, starting all over again. When I go to poetry events I feel very comfortable as I know a lot of people and they know me. It's funny that there's a completely different crowd that goes to short fiction events compared to poetry events. What I really like about the poetry scene is that everybody is welcome and everybody can have a go and you get a great mix of people. Of course everybody is welcome at the short fiction events as well, but the main difference is that you have to submit your stories in advance to the short fiction events and only a few get selected to be read on the night, whereas anyone can go up and do anything at a poetry open mic night. It makes the short fiction scene more competitive, but I understand that this is necessary. You can stand listening to a poem that is not to your taste for 5 minutes, but it's worse listening to a story for 15 minutes that is absolute rubbish, so I guess you need some kind of filter.

The reason I started to write poetry at all was that I needed a break from my novel writing, the satisfaction of actually completing something. Poetry used to be my hobby, but somewhere along the line I started to take myself too seriously ... I need to find the FUN again.

I also must admit that I love being on stage. I'm quite shy in real life and often worry about boring people and taking up to much space, but on stage I feel absolutely free: it's my time to speak. Being on stage is also an excuse to dress up. As I don't go clubbing on a regular basis, as I used to in my early twenties, I don't often get a chance to dress up ...

Lastly I'm interested in blog readers opinions: Why do so few people write both prose and poetry? Well, some poets write short stories, but very few write novels. And very few novelists writes poetry, but do write short stories. (As mentioned before you don't see many people from the poetry scene at short story events or many people from the short story scene at poetry events.) For me it's either poems or novels; I find that short stories are a real challenge and haven't written that many, but it's time for a change ...

Photo: Kristen Healy

Time Management

I want to have time to:
*read trashy novels for pure pleasure
*read classics and understand them
*paint my nails twice a week
*use teeth plackers
*write letters
*listen to a whole CD album and read the lyrics

I thought I'd have time to do these things, now that I've finished my novel, Replacing Angel, and sent it off to agents. But funnily enough it seems like I've got LESS time when I'm not working on a particular project...

I become more organised when I write; my life has a structure and I feel focused. Now I'm drifting like a discarded water bottle in the sea. Do I have a message inside me? I don't know. When I shuffled my iTunes to start writing this blog post the first song that started playing was Lou Reed's "There's no time"! My message to myself and everyone else is that you have to make time for things - if you don't you'll drift to a distant shore of a desert island where there's nobody to pick you up ...

Despite all this drifting I've had the first really productive day for about a week.
*I washed my clothes
*Re-wrote Steal from the rich and give to the poor, a short story that I wrote a year ago, and sent it off to a couple of people for feedback (am planning to submit it to SPARKS - a short fiction night)
*Worked on a poem for a friend's wedding
*Booked a night at a hostel in London as I need to stay there on my way to a literature festival in Gothenburg at the end of March (and in London I'll attend a launch party for 3 Myriad novelists)
*Wrote a very short postcard and posted it
*Power-walked along the seafront and did some food shopping on the way back
*Went through my writing workshop "It's raining words"(that I'm doing at Hove Library next Monday) with my friend Sophie
*Made some notes and prepared stuff for the workshop
*Booked a train ticket to London (£3 advance on the national rail website)
*Printed Google maps of parts of London and Gothenburg

And now ... it's 10 pm and I've been up for 13 hours, and the only real leisure time I've had was when I had breakfast and read Patricia Highsmith's Carol. I don't feel sorry for myself. I designed this day (made a list before going to bed last night) and am very happy and grateful that I achieved so much. It's a mystery though that there's a still a pile of socks and knickers on my bed waiting to be sorted out after being in the tumble dryer ... Hopefully I'll get to bed before midnight.