How to Feed a Writer

Are you joined up?

2010-04-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a round-up of organizations who offer advice, training, guidance and support for those interested in creative writing and education:

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

Philippa Johnston of literature training looks at the opportunities for writers to work in schools and other educational and community settings. You can download a pdf of "Is there a writer in the house?" from the literature training site:

NAWE is the National Association of Writers in Education. They are currently accepting papers from members for the next conference in November; ideas for papers (come on, they're presentations, really) are due 31 May. I'm thinking about doing one on how to include live literature in creative writing workshops - what do you think? You can learn more about NAWE here:

NALD is the National Association of Literature Development - there are loads of courses on their website, offering you access and training, to take your writing and your workshops forward. And if you're running courses, they want to know about them, to add to their site. You can email them here:

Inspiration and new ideas from Wordhorde:

A recent article on the Writers' Guide website: Kevin McCann on the benefits, to writers and students, of taking poetry into schools:

REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

Of course, this all depends on your region. You can find out more from visiting your regional ACE site and find out who they fund and who they recommend. If you're in Scotland, Norwich, West or East Midlands, the South of England or East Kent - you're in luck! As I'm South and South East, I'll recommend my locals in particular:

New Writing South is a membership organization that provides training, professional development, and support to creative writers of all genres. They also have a Creative Learning team that regularly provides workshops in schools and, soon, workplaces.

And I have to put in a plug for East Kent Live Lit, the live literature organization for East Kent that offers professional development and small one-off grants for the creation and development of new pieces.

GLOBAL/ON-LINE/SOCIAL NETWORKING:
Wherever your live, whatever your time constraints, there is no excuse not to be connected. There are Facebook and Twitter follows for most national and regional organizations, as well as a real and effective way to join up with other writers, producers, venues, publishers, agents, and the rest. While I'm not a huge fan of Facebook, though I struggle to understand it and use it, I am a passionate advocate of Twitter - it's fast and effective. Sign up at Twitter.com and click on Find People. Type in keywords of what you're looking for and Twitter will give you a series of options. You can also follow thread conversations via the hastag # - #artspro will get you in on the conversation with other writers and artists interested in professional development. #bectax will get you in on a brand new thread discussing the use of tech and social media in the classroom - a particular interest of mine. Meet other writers at #litchat

However you do it, do get joined up. Writing is a lonely road - why not fill your car with some support, encouragement, and training - you'll get where you're trying to go faster and more efficiently, to be sure!

Sometimes you just hang around

2010-03-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

In another school today, hoping to get the whole school working together on a community project. But sometimes the school has other plans. Like this clock stuck at 12:30, I'm stuck, waiting for something to happen and something to do. When you turn up to work with folks, sometimes they're not ready or not available. As a "creative" in a school, it's just not "about" you.
It's about waiting. Waiting for opportunity. An open face or door. Skulking around, looking for an invitation. Being a writer, then, is good practice. We're all about waiting, about being ready . And it's not about you - it's about moving ideas forward, but only when they're ready. When they let you. Even when it feels like time is standing still, keep waiting for something to happen. It surely will. Oh, someone's ready to meet with me - off I go then!

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back on Blogger

2010-03-29T01:59:00.000-07:00

...and many thanks to those who followed the link to Wordpress. I'll be moving back and forth while I decide which one will win my fair hand...

I have reached 10K of the first book. So what, I hear you say. Hey, books aren't built in a day - though I am staggered by the revelation that Hans Fallada wrote "Alone in Berlin" in one month - and this while having been in a psychiatric hospital. I'll be blogging what I read as research on the other site - but haven't had the time just yet. Anyway, 10K is a milestone of sorts - though as I'm writing on Scrivener it's hard to appreciate what I have. Scrivener doesn't deal in "pages", only words. So I have no idea what it looks like. And maybe that's a good thing, because 10K is just a drop in the bucket. But it's probably 1/10 of my book.

And I have a bit of time to work on it today, post-blog, and then descend back into workshop-land to earn my crust. Tomorrow is for finishing the modern slavery project with an installation made by 140 Year 9s. And Wednesday is for moving along a community writing/reading project in Ramsgate and my first sit-in with the Maths class. Will the girls spot my Maths anxiety straight off? Undoubtedly. It's good to take your fear places. Fear reminds us we're alive and that it matters. Whether it's Maths or the creative health of kids or the first ten thousand little words. It's all scary and it all matters.

How many is too many?

2010-03-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I am being unfaithful.

I am being unfaithful to Blogger and have been tampering with Wordpress. You see, Wordpress gives me what Blogger doesn't. But then - with Blogger I know where I am. I feel comfortable with Blogger. I can hang out with Blogger on the sofa in my yoga pants. Wordpress makes my heart race with possibilities. But I don't know if my fancy for it will fade. I don't know if I should encourage this heart racing. And, in the very act of my being unfaithful, Blogger has gone and had a make-over - the new Design Template is a corker. It's like old faithful has gone and had a facelift.

And with the Wordpress site, that's three blogs. That might just be a blog or two too many. The East Kent Live Lit site is for doings in Kent and trends in live literature and digital literature. That one stays. The Wordpress site is a new thinking place for my second novel, a place to put research, thoughts, and progress on my learning to use Scrivener.

So - what then will become of this blog? Is there room for it in my head and in cyberspace? On the book blog I won't be commenting on earning/not earning a living as a writer and all the crafty ways writers have of trying to work. So, maybe that will continue here. Maybe this will continue as a place about professional development when it isn't appropriate for the East Kent Live Lit blog? To tell the truth, I don't know. But please keep checking back with me, to see what happens. And if you, too, fancy an affair, visit me at my Wordpress blog:

A new anthology

2010-03-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

Just received this image from Stephen Moran, organizer of the Willesden Herald competition. My short story, Pearl, was commended by Stephen and will be included in this new anthology, New Short Stories 4. It's my first publication ever - not much gets printed by playwrights - so I'm really, really pleased. We have a little launch coming up at the Dickens Museum. Just thought I'd let you know!

Another Kind of Writing Workshop

2010-03-04T09:16:00.001-08:00

I run a lot of writing workshops. Sometimes they're writing workshops disguised as creative thinking workshops. Sometimes they are creative thinking workshops disguised as vehicles of torture. Sometimes I find myself having conversations like these in schools:

14 year old girl: Miss, why are you touching me?

Me: Why do you have a rope around that boy's neck?

We were doing a team-building exercise. In the dark. Yes, 60 14 year olds, erecting tents in the dark. Seemed a good idea at the time. But then, don't all workshops? You plan and plan, and sometimes you end up with participants garroting one another. Anyway.

I think a lovely way to spend a workshop would be to deliver one to a business. You'd at least be guaranteed a cup of tea. So I was very pleased to be invited on a training day at the Arts Council to learn more about how writers can work with businesses, provided by New Writing South (their link will take you straight to their Creative Learning team, of which I am a proud member, and you can also see a fetching photo taken of a recent workshop I ran on digital literature in a technology college) and Edinburgh's Henzteeth, a "creative writers for business" company.

Henzteeth founder Stuart talked us through how his company got started and how he found a means to employ himself as a writer who also had an ability as a copywriter. But he was quick to point out that creative writers working with businesses are there as creative writers; if businesses want copywriting or branding support, they will go to the experts. Businesses are cutting back in this economic climate to be sure, but businesses also know that their currency is creativity. Creative strategies are the only ways for businesses to truly grow and thrive. Enter the writer!

Henzteeth have a couple of schemes to engage business people with creative writing and thinking, and they have provided workshops and residencies to such companies as Orange and the British Council. Their website provides a number of inspiring testimonies, and it has terrific potential for all creative writers looking to increase their workshop scope.

He cautioned against trying to take on too much. "You cannot transform a group in a 2 hour workshop. It’s hard work. You have to go over things again and again, you are battling psychologically with fear and issues of what they feel permitted to do in their work place." His advice? "Know what you can do in a period of time. Limit your promises. You are not a magician."

The key task for a creative writer is to "Get people connected with language, this fantastic resource that we have. Help them get a fresh feel for language, the joys, the pleasure of it. Be there to humanize communication." For, as he pointed out, the workplace is filled with dehumanized vocabulary, empty rhetoric, verbal shorthand, and clubby acronym-speak. It's no wonder it can be hard to write copy when you're wading through a mire of business-speak or "plain speaking". Stuart said, "When people come to work in a business they leave themselves at the door. There is an unnatural language they are working in, an unnatural schedule. They are trapped in it. Paradoxically, businesses know the only way they can expand is through creativity and imagination – while business bottom line is about making money, and workers are functions and cogs in the machine. They want new ideas but they’re frightened by them. The key to communication is the customer – only the customer makes a business work. Like who is the audience, when you're. Where is the story? How can you engage the customer with the story of the business?"

Stuart reminded us to focus less on functions and roles in the workplace and to focus instead on workers as creative individuals, to focus on what they are creating through their job. Often the task can be to help participants to create a narrative of their experience in the workplace, or to create a narrative of what it is they want their customers to know. This can be accomplished through discovering the narrative of the founder of the business, for instance. What does the story of the founder of the Guinness brewery say about its modern workforce? Can they be inspired by their founder's tenacity and sustainability? Can that sensibility be told through story to Guinness customers? Who doesn't remember their TV commercials, by the way.... If marketing can feel like a story then customers will be engaged, he told us. And that certainly made me think of the junk mail I get sent by banks - it never occurred to me before...why does it have to be junk? What if it were - writing? Good writing? Would it cost the bank more for it to be a good read? What if we felt that businesses were creative and authentic and real? What if the marketing actually told us something we could believe?

Stuart was an excellent trainer and had a trunkful of prompts and exercises that made for a very creative day. I can see how a writer in the workplace would be great fun for workers and I know, as does anyone who runs workshops, that they make a difference to participants, whether they are in suits or scrubs or uniforms or prison gear. Personally, I think you offer the same workshop and the same tools to whoever you work with and let participants decide if you speed up or slow down together. Schemes such as these are brilliant for participants, of course. But they're also brilliant for writers, as they earn you a bit of a wage and they help you to share your love of writing, of why you get up and do it, day after day, and how, if you believe hard enough, it might just change the world....

Is it just me?

2010-03-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or are there too many how to write/how to feed yourself while you're writing blogs? I didn't think there were that many when I started. Now I feel there is a surplus. I suppose I am guilty of having not read enough blogs before I started. But with the excellent Net News Wire installed on the iPhone, there really is no excuse not to keep up to date.

And keep up to date, I do! You can see from the right hand bar whose writer-how-to blogs I'm following here (and publicly - big up Katherine, Vanessa and James) but with Net News Wire you can subscribe to blogs directly from their programme, and bloggers don't see that information. Friend Katherine says that Google Analytics will tell you more, but that does seem a step too far just at this moment.

Just this morning while test-driving Scrivener, I started my second novel. I hadn't intended to. I just needed something to put in the clean white square to see what would happen. And maybe that's the best way to start a novel - by trying to do something else.

What I mean to say is... maybe we're all thinking too much and writing too much about how to do it... and really we just ought to be doing it? But having said that, I do enjoy this blogging business. What would it feel like if I blogged the new book instead? If it became my thinking space? And what if I left off the more general discussions of how to make a living at it - because there are others who are doing it much more successfully than me. Maybe I just need to crack on with my own writing. What do you think?

What do writers pack?

2010-02-11T04:20:00.001-08:00

Packing up for a few days away. I thought I would be rewriting on this trip, but that all got speeded up. So, what does a writer pack to - well, to not write? First in goes the laptop, of course. How can you blog and tweet without it? Well, you can tweet from the iPhone, of course, and the Facebook app works pretty well, but I haven't figured out how to blog on it. And iPlayer is essential for Mad Men viewing.

I'll pack the notebook for the book I've finished, because you never know when a good bath will lead to a good idea. In goes the book I'm currently reading, Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief. It's a good read. David Copperfield meets The Grifters. I'll probably finish it on the train. Next in goes Salt, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, the swanky second book from Katherine May that I'm reading in beta-mode, printed as it was, oh so cleverly, on lulu.com And then there will be the trauma of what other 2 books to pack? Something serious and work-affirming? Or another bit of a reading romp? I've only been reading about polygamists and canola farming for so long....

Tucked into pockets will go the LA Times crossword puzzles I'm addicted to, and the Sims 3 new world traveller edition, or whatever it's called, because sometimes you just need to make avatars fight zombies. Last but not least knickers, rain boots, tea bags. That's it - I'm good to go!

So... what do you pack when you're not writing?

Waiting

2010-02-08T06:07:00.000-08:00

Waiting is hard. Right now, I'm waiting for a gap in the snow to take the husband's dinner suit to the dry cleaner's. I could just go out in the snow, dash out and dash back in, wet-haired, red-nosed. But I'm waiting for a suitable gap between rain, snow, sleet and hail. For some weather I won't fall down in. I may be waiting some time.

Right now, I'm also waiting for feedback on my novel. I have no control over when this might come, any more than I have control over winter. I feel aimless as snow while I'm waiting. I feel my attention darting about my head, manic as these flakes outside. But so what?

How can you speed up waiting? I could run outside in my splintered-elastic bikini and tell myself it's summer. But goosebumps would point out my lie. I could stalk the one I wait to hear from, firing off paranoid emails, hunting on Facebook, finding her on Twitter and following only her. But I won't. All things take time. Waiting is hard, hard as gardens in February. But waiting is not harder than finishing a book. Seasons will change. Feedback will come. Wait - is it clearing up outside? Off to the dry cleaner's then -

The Highs - and Lows - of Rewriting

2010-02-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

I am a binge-rewriter. I am a rewrite-aholic. When I know there's some rewriting in the house, I can't think of anything else. I can't eat, I can't sleep. The voice of the rewrite comes from the cupboard, the fridge, the laptop. "Rewrite me." Can you hear it?

I blogged earlier on that pause before a rewrite, when you gird your loins before entering the rewrite's lair. Then an email out of the blue made my calm and steady rewriting schedule turn into a kind of drunken orgy of rewriting. I could not get enough of it, fast enough. Rewriting isn't meant to be a sprint to the finish. How can you see where you're going when you're rushing and crashing through the forest of your own words? You lose shoes, flip over furniture, snapping metaphors and images in your wake. But the rush of it is exhilarating. It's like rewriting with a gun to your head. "Rewrite or die". It feels that crucial, that vital. Even when the news, caught in snatched bursts, reminds you it is not.

Rewriting is supposed to be a marathon, I think. Not for the faint of heart, this long plod word by word. But I don't know - this is my first and you make up the rules as you go along, don't you? Maybe next book I can make the first draft the marathon, a slow deep wade in rather than the doggy paddle of a first draft I did, merely to see if I could get from end to end. Subsequent drafts have all been diving. Excavating instead of pruning. Who knows how it's meant to go? I only know there will be a next one. Whatever happens with this one. I'm hooked. That's how this disease is.

The Power of Nings

2010-01-24T10:52:00.001-08:00

"Is a Ning Facebook for grown-ups?" asks friend Katherine. Answer? Sort of.

Nings are social networks. They form a democratic community where all members are equal; not even the member who created the Ning is more equal than anyone else. Members can have individual walls like Facebook, but also join groups and follow like Twitter. There are hyper-links galore and everything is trackable via email - or not. Nings can be public or invite-only, so that nobody's there who doesn't want or need to be. You can post photos and videos. You can add posts, email or comment on individual walls or to groups. What's not to like? I do not work for Ning.com, I might add, but it really is the most fantastic and intuitive software. I set one up just to see how it worked - and it did. In fact, a Ning exists for Ning Creatives, giving you lots of new ideas for ways to use Ning for networking and getting yourself out there.

How does it work? First, somebody has the create the Ning. If you build it they will come, of course. You decide what the Ning is for and who should be there. For instance, I run a live literature network. We publicize regional events via a website, a blog, and Mailchimp emails. If the network were a Ning, everything would happen there, all under one roof. Time saver - check. So, why isn't my network a Ning? Therein lies the strength - and weakness - of a Ning.

Nings rely on its members. If nobody goes to the Ning, nothing happens. It isn't passive like an email, though Ning will email you comments and changes on it if you like. And it isn't passive like Facebook, where you pop in and see the party that has gone on without you. Nings need consistency and participation, like any good democracy. But not everybody is willing for "one more thing" in their lives. And that I do understand. You risk building a Ning that nobody visits if they don't understand what it's for or they just don't want to commit.

What relevance does this have for writers? Aside from the fact that it is a terrific place to gather a network of like-minded individuals who are all active participants in a project, from creating an anthology to taking part in an on-line writing community, Nings are also terrific for writing projects and courses. I first learned about Nings from friend Gilly Smith, whose Sussex House Party Ning is terrific fun. Not only does she encourage students in writing workshops to create blogs about their process, suggesting it is a real tool for sharpening criticism and for learning how to write quickly and succinctly, but she also creates Nings to make groups happen.

Inspired by her, I set up my first Ning for a creative project with teenagers in Tonbridge. On their Ning, I invited the individuals to join and I posted photos and videos of our work together. That's all. I made a safe place for them to talk to each other, and then I went away. Still, the participants find each other through the Ning, and they can find me. It's an easy way to create a group that can stay together as long as everyone is taking part, and the group can live on without your needing to administrate it. How many times have we left a particularly great writing group or workshop with the promise to keep in touch? And how many times do we actually do it? Putting that promise on a Ning means people can stay in touch as often as they like, while also having a place to share, file and post work. It might feel like "one more thing" too many for some folks, but in fact it is the very best of all the various things we use to stay in touch with each other - all under one roof.

If you want to have a go, visit Ning.com. How will you use your Ning?

Do you run Writing Workshops?

2010-01-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

I get this question often, especially from writers who do not yet run them. What's not to love? It's the opportunity to share your ideas, your process, and your passion with other people who love to write. It's a way to share your skills, hand down what you've learned, and talk about writing. Isn't it?

The answer is - it can be. But it depends. Writers run workshops in all kinds of contexts and environments. And there are many more opportunities for writing workshops than you might think.

WRITING FOR WRITERS: Writing workshops for other adult writers as part of their professional development is great. You can work with beginner, emerging, or advanced writers, to help them find new ideas, sustain them through writing longer pieces, or work on editing a piece they hope is finished. These workshops can be run through adult education, local arts centres, or through writer's networks. Do you have a local writer's network? Do you belong to it? If you don't support local schemes, they will simply go away... join in them, invest in them, help to make them better!

WRITING WITH KIDS: This is what most writers think writing workshops will be, going into a school to share stories and inspire a love of language. And sometimes it is. Primary schools have traditionally been a great place for writers to encourage kids to play with words, while secondary schools have presented opportunity for residencies to work on types of writing, from plays to films, with older kids. The latest hoo-ha about CRBs won't change anything for writers in schools; we have always needed them. And you will also need insurance - the standard 5 million will do you. And if you're serious about wanting to be a writer in school, your first stop should be NAWE, the National Association for Writers in Education. A membership will get you access to their information, as well as the all-important CRB and insurance, a must-have for freelancers. If you don't want to go it alone, ask your local arts development office if they need writers in schools, speak to your literature development officer for the Arts Council, or find out if Creative Partnerships is working in your area and looking for writers - some are busier than others. And don't be afraid to think outside the box. Try children's charities and local young carers. Look at other opportunities for children in your area, from stage schools to football, and think if a writer could help. (Don't laugh - a lot of local football clubs have writers in residence to inspire their young footballers in training to keep up with their learning).

WRITING IN PRISON: Getting a writer-in-residence job with a local young offender prison helped me take my own writing workshops seriously and helped me make the jump into proper self-employment. These posts are advertised yearly by the Writers in Prison Network, an excellent organisation that has been putting writers into prison for years, but not every prison gets one and they rotate through England and Wales. If they hire you, you get proper training and support. As a writer-in-residence you might do any kind of writing: magazines, screenplays, novels, life writing, poetry, rap lyrics, you name it. But there is also work in PRUs, Pupil Referral Units, which come up in the Arts Council Jobs Listings or with companies like Arts Community Exchange. If you want regular work, you could also look at becoming a tutor in the Education department of a prison or PRU - an inspiring teacher with a love of words can make a big difference there. It's tough work but among the most rewarding you will ever, ever do.

WRITING AND HEALTH: Just like schools and prisons, hospitals and hospices often have writers-in-residence and offer writing and creative workshops for patients, carers and staff. Writing workshops can help people to cope with their illnesses, put grief in perspective, or address mental health and wellbeing issues. Writers can also be helpful with older people and stimulating memories. Google around and see what you can find.

WRITING IN BUSINESS: Some businesses opt to have writers around - and the writers aren't expected to beef up press releases. Creative thinking is good for you - and it can be great for a business, to help them think outside the box. I run writing workshops for New Writing South and this is a new area they are just getting into - so I'll blog as I learn more about it - but if even Heathrow can see the sense of hiring a writer-in-residence, it can't be too long until everybody's doing it.

And really, this has only scratched the surface. One last piece of advice? For goodness sake, use Twitter! Find the folks who are doing what you want to do and follow them, get to know them, read their blogs. They were just beginners, too, after all!

Rewriting and Losing your Way

2010-01-03T07:42:00.000-08:00

I have been working on my first novel for what feels like a very long time. A very long time for a playwright who was used to rewriting a play in a week. I have not been writing this novel for as long as many writers take for their novels, and I have not been writing this novel for a number of weeks now, as I decided to take a little time out from it and see if I could read it, down the road, with fresh eyes. Crafty or lazy? You decide.

I've taken time to read all the things I bookmarked on the internet that I thought would be helpful for the book that I hadn't taken the time to read before. Some of it was helpful; some of it was clearly bookmarked for roads not taken. I have been catching up with the wheat harvests in the Panhandle and with the ongoing UEP trials in Utah. I've been ordering DVDs from the States that I meant to order before, but thought I might find closer to home. I've also been reading some of those "how to write a good book" books that I buy in low moments, seeking comfort. Some of them actually offered it. I'm halfway through Donald Maass's "Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook", for instance, which is a great book if you like making lists and actually doing the writing exercises that, in a manual, are far too easy to put off for later. I'm not entirely sure what a Breakout Novel is, and even less sure if I'm writing one, but it's a different way of thinking and planning, and I think that's what I need.

Because when you're rewriting, you can lose your way a bit in the woods. You can forget why you started this journey, where you were going, and what you thought you would find once you got there. Rewriting either asks you to look harder at your map and where you are, or asks you to back up and look at the bigger picture - where you are in context to where you were and where you want to be. I suppose I'm trying to back up from my book, trying to look at the big story I was trying to tell and seeing what of that is actually on the page. Looking at how I can make my story, well, bigger. And then will come the time to zoom back in. That's the theory, anyway!

Grateful

2009-12-31T08:19:00.000-08:00

It's the full moon and the blue moon and the eclipse tonight. And if that doesn't get you thinking about endings and beginnings, nothing will. Tweets and posts herald "best" and "worst" lists, lining up years and decades like a dot to dot that you feel you can connect - somehow must connect - to understand where you are, where you were, and how you moved between the two. News programmes wheel out disasters, the miserable and the dead, as people continue to shoot each other, blow themselves up, and you chill champagne for hours of darkness when you will smile and start the countdown.

Bing and Oprah advise counting your blessings when these blue hours come, so I sit in my blue house and focus on counting. There are more blessings than I could hold in both hands.

I am grateful for this small blue house, its walls and door. I am grateful for the time and freedom to write. It is no one's fault if I do not do all I want or think I should do in the time I am given; I am lucky to have what I do. (And ten years ago, if this is the night for such comparisons, I did not have that time or freedom. I felt only the weight of time and obligation.) I am grateful for writers and readers who have supported my rewriting this year - I started this year having just finished the first draft of my first novel and having taken my first Arvon course, the advanced fiction week with a group of the most wonderful, funny writers, now friends - Jo, Tim, Sarah, Tara. (Ten years ago I was an unemployed and struggling playwright, trying to move up the ladder. I am grateful for the chance, the energy, and the resilience to start over.) I am grateful to Susan Elderkin, Katherine May, and Sara Maitland, who each read drafts at crucial stages and offered generous support and criticisms. I am grateful to Chris Taylor and New Writing South, and to Keiren Phelan and the Arts Council for their support. I am grateful to have had enough work throughout the year, and I am grateful still to have enough heat, enough food, enough wine, enough music. I am grateful for new friends, and I am grateful for the many old and dear friends I have seen this year. I am grateful to live where I do, as I do, with, it must be said, a frankly wonderful partner. I am grateful to be about to embark on what I hope will be the last draft of this book.

So, what's with this blueness? Is it the relentless focus on endings, on completion? I hope not. We only ever have this moment, right now, I know that. Perhaps I have been watching and reading too many "end of the year/decade" summaries. Perhaps I'm simply having a hope bypass. Celebrating a new year is an act of faith, a spell or process that will let you scrub out a year, a decade, a century in the split second of Big Ben's toll, erasing all mistakes and regrets to emerge midnight-born - and that somehow champagne will ease the passage between. And who knows - perhaps it will. Perhaps it does, every year.

Perhaps it is the concept of time itself. Pagans celebrate new year on Hallowe'en, but there is still this hiccup between un-synched calendars, our bodies poised for hibernation and burrowing while our culture asks us to eat, drink, and be merry. Yule, the birth of the sun god, squeezes in before the birth of Christ, then the arbitrary flip of the calendar that leaves you misdating the few cheques you still write.

Perhaps it is a fear of making resolutions, of not taking these transitions more seriously - or of taking them far too seriously. I want to be happier and healthier and use my time more wisely and with more care. But who doesn't? Don't you? I want our culture, our society, our planet to use its time more wisely and with more care. I want the news to stop being so relentlessly disastrous, but I do not want to care less about the disasters themselves. I want to make a small window of quiet hope in me that the full moon light will shine into and illuminate. So I will take another moment in this quiet blue house, to say thank you, to count blessings, to coax and cajole my blue soul, then go back inside and make soup for loved ones, open bottles for loved ones, counting all of them, too, as blessings. Whatever it means to you - happy new year.

Do you understand publishing?

2009-11-22T03:02:00.000-08:00

The first panel I went to yesterday at the Birmingham Book Festival's Writers' Toolkit was "Understanding Publishing." Understandably, the room was packed. The three panelists laughed a bit at the table at the title, wishing they all understood publishing. But that is what hungry writers were there for.

Author Sophie Hannah kicked things off by describing her progress from poet to feted crime novelist with sales over 300,000. As a poet, Sophie said that she had not needed an agent before, but 100 pages into her first novel, "Little Face", she suspected she did. The first agent to respond told her it was, "Awful. Put it in the bin." Did Sophie crumble at the feedback and go back to poetry? She did not. She decided the agent was wrong and persevered, through a succession of agents, until she found one who liked the book that she had written as she had written it. Crime fiction can be a formulaic genre (one agent she walked away from said she "loved the book" but that she wouldn't represent it unless Sophie added "a sinister housekeeper" to be a "red herring") and Sophie wanted to challenge the formula - and it has made her, and her agency, very successful. She offered a bit of advice for finding an agent: "Trust your instincts; keep their feedback in perspective with what you think." And she left us with the question - is your agent a help or a hindrance to you and your work?

Daniela de Groote spoke for the independent publisher Arcadia Books, a small house with a strong track record in non-fiction and translation work but which is gaining ground in new fiction, most notably with Jenn Ashworth's "A Kind of Intimacy," currently shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize. Daniela said that while in much of Europe that writers had direct relationships with publishers, writers in this country needed to work through agents. They act as filters with reputations and relationships that enable publishers to trust their judgement. But in rare cases Daniela said that writers may directly approach a publisher. "How?" asked a writer. "By coming to workshops and conferences, like this one." In fact, the writer was having trouble securing an agent for her Welsh mystery and Daniela invited her to submit it to Arcadia. Everybody perked up a bit then and writers started to get a bit more personal with their questions and their own publishing problems. Daniela confessed that while, "nobody likes agents, that they are necessary and learning how to work with them was key. "They're not your mother," she commented. "They work for you."

Last up was Bloodaxe Books founder Simon Thirsk, who talked about how he hopes to encourage everyone to write poetry, but that not all poetry is publishable. In fact, not all poetry should be published. "People want to express themselves," he said, "and the question is - is this commercial? Or is this just personal?" He said that poets must combine their craft with what they have to say, and know how good they are, know if they are actually good enough. Agents provide this context, he noted. They help you to see your work in the context of the other books they are representing, the other writers they are developing.

UNESCO's last reported figures for publication output of countries was illuminating. In 2006 the UK led the world by publishing 206,000 books, topping runners-up USA with their 172,000, and outstripping neighbours France who published 34,000. "This is the place to be for new writers," Simon said. But did it feel like it in a discussion where that golden chalice of agent and publisher still seemed so elusive? There are no easy answers and there is no secret that anyone can give. We all, still, must sit down and do the work. But surely coming to networking opportunities in your region will increase your chances of meeting someone who might help, and I hope the writer with the Welsh mystery will take Arcadia up on its offer. After all, what do any of us have to lose with following up on contacts made in a small, full room where everybody is suddenly so human?

"Are you still writing?"

2009-11-19T15:52:00.001-08:00

A network member asked me, quite innocently, this question by email. The conversation had begun about a theatre I had worked in and my saying that I had found their workshops useful. I also wanted to know what kinds of professional development she, as a writer, found helpful, as I plan our network workshops for next year. But I wasn't expecting that. "Are you still writing?"

Am I still writing? Most certainly. I suppose no one in the network sees me writing, unless it's note and attendance taking at events. And do I talk about my work? Only when pressed, I guess, when it comes up and there's actually time to answer the question. Am I still writing? The simple answer is there is never a moment when I am not writing. I am encouraging children to write and I am writing. I am investing in your work and I am still writing. I am writing these blogs and filling these forms and updating these sites and I am still writing. I am always writing; the hum in my head, the backdrop to these other concerns, are the scenes I am stitching, the visions I'm catching, the stories I'm telling, all - I'm still writing.

How do you get help for your writing?

2009-11-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

Most writers wear many hats. Sometimes I have a writing hat, probably a slouchy beret, blue as the house I write in. Many days I don a workshopping cap, which has many bells and whistles to entice young people to write and dream. This morning I'm wearing my live lit hat, which sometimes needs to look much smarter than I do and sometimes makes my head too hot.

What's all this about hats then? It's about fluidity and moving between all the hooks on your coat stand so that you are neglecting none of them, serving all. But how do you do that? You start by not being an island. (Oh dear, hats to islands. A metaphor too far.) You start by reaching out to support networks and like-minded creatives. You start by offering help - and accepting it when it's offered. This creative world is not all take - it's also give.

My writing has benefitted so much from the support and encouragement of organisations like New Writing South, Arvon, TLC, Soho Theatre and Arts Council England. I am profoundly grateful and I know that my writing would not have advanced without their input. But then, I'm a joiner. Are you? Not everybody is. It takes time, sometimes money. But I do know this: organisations are valuable not simply for the money they can offer you to buy you writing time - or the time they invest in you as a writer. They are also able to see you and your work in a way that you cannot. They can provide context and guidance.

But sometimes you don't like what the organisation has to say to you. "If you like me, you're right... if you don't like me..." But hey, it's like reading reviews (or eating Pringles) - if you take one, you gotta keep going. Because organisations can see you and your work in the context of the rest of the writers they're looking at, they can often see where you are among them and perhaps offer a way through the tangle that you cannot. Sometimes we are so busy looking at ourselves and at what we want that we cannot see where we are or where we're going. The answer for that? A more personal network - the critical friend, the like-minded creative. Can they help you see yourself? And can they help you interpret what your organisation of choice has said?

Ultimately, writers have to find their own ways forward. A creative piece written by committee will be a dull read indeed. But if you're wondering how you measure up in the cultural arena - if you're wondering if your work is good enough or ready enough - if you're wondering what would help you take the next step forward in your own work - think about how an organisation, whether professional or local, whether providing development or a place to get feedback on your writing, can get you the help and the context that you need. Join and be a good, strong member of the organisation, be a consistent and honest critical friend, so that you're also giving as you're receiving.

A Day at Leigh Academy

2009-11-14T05:48:00.000-08:00

Just before the NAWE conference I did two days of workshops at The Leigh Academy of Technology. Aside from the sat nav meltdown and accompanying "I'm lost" trauma of missing the early morning workshop, I had a splendid time. I was told that the students did not particularly enjoy writing and did not particularly want to write. So fine so good. I planned a workshop that would revel in Web 2.0, introducing writing prompts through and working with the technology that the students already had and enjoyed using. I showed them Andy Campbell's amazing digital fiction that reads like playing a game at Dreaming Methods and we played together on the collaborative story site, Story Bird. Then we wrote together on mobile phones to write the shortest short stories we could.

Here are some of the short short stories the students wrote, inspired by the recent Times Cheltenham Twitter Competition, that were texted to me in the workshop. (The first 5 to text were told they would get their money back! Those who had no credit could still take part, on that prehistoric mobile phone known as pen and paper. However they wrote, their stories were shown up on the board via digital camera)

A few seconds after, it wouldn't have happened. Maybe what's done is fate and what's done is done for a reason.

I stepped out from the gloom of the ever looming forest. Stood. Then fled.

I was stolen by the eyes of a girl but the stolen eyes were never returned.

The dad took the baby to the fair and it was never seen again.

The boy had died on the road and came back to haunt.

He walks down the road every day holding a fork but he never goes home.

Not bad for 1 minute's work, eh? They then stretched them out to make longer pieces, with more detail and expanding the story either before the sentence they wrote moving toward the sentence or from the sentence they wrote to carry on with the story. Some stayed with the moment they wrote and expanded upon it, adding details to work toward making a prose poem. I was very impressed by a number of short pieces written rapid-fire, read and refined, then presented. But mostly I was impressed that everyone - everyone - was willing to have a go and write down something, however much they told me and themselves it "wasn't very good." But they were - they were.

Writing is a brave act and writing in a big room full of 60 students is not easy. But I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Leigh Academy and look forward to returning. Keep writing, guys! You can do it!

Getting Writers into Schools

2009-11-14T00:14:00.001-08:00

Are you a writer who wants to work in schools, running writing workshops?

The NAWE Conference in Southampton featured a discussion and skills-sharing session with Jonathan Davidson, artistic director of the Birmingham Book Festival and creator of Write On!, a West Midlands initiative for getting more writers into schools, a move prompted by the slightly academic nature of NAWE recently. The discussion even got a bit lively as writers and project managers extolled the virtues, perils and disappointments of working with writing agencies that place writers into schools, such as New Writing South, First Story, The Poetry Society and Creative Partnerships.

Why do writers want to work in schools? Not only is it a way to earn your crust, it is a chance to share your skills and your love of writing with students who do not write or understand why they should want to. Creative writing is competing with a slew of gadgets and gimmicks for young people's attention. Not only must you convince them that writing is more than spelling and grammar, but that it is the best way for them to communicate, express, and understand themselves and each other. Jonathan Davidson believes that putting writers into schools is helping to transform culture from the inside - that a society that writes and appreciates writing is happier and healthier - and that a Britain that writes well can build on its reputation as a creative leader, "punching above its weight" in the world. But more of that later.

The session began with a look at how writers are identified and selected to go into schools. First Story said they looked first at the quality of work of the writers, as they want the "best" and most celebrated writers to go into their challenging schools. They are looking for writers with a proven track record of published work and awards, even if they haven't had training to actually work in schools. Alternatively, The Poetry Society have an Education Team and New Writing South have a Creative Learning Team drawn from their memberships; they provide training and professional development for their writers to learn how to do their best work in schools, and to determine if working in schools even suits them. There were also some complaints about Creative Partnerships' focus on creative process rather than in strictly practice-led work, so that a writer might find herself leading a workshop in any form but writing. Davidson's Write On! is designed as an opportunity for local writers to get professional development and work - that is, in fact, part of their funding.

Writers who got work in schools off their own back commented that they could earn more by not working through an agency, while writers who did work for agencies insisted that managers and administrators were best placed to negotiate and make relationships and arrangements that allow the writer to do what it is they actually do - run workshops. All agencies stressed that you couldn't rely on them to provide enough work. Workshops are not designed to replace your writing, but to supplement it. Writers in schools must be "writing role models" and continuing to write is a necessity.

Are you interested in getting more work in schools? Or in just getting started? The best place to find schools who want writers is to join Arts Jobs, the daily listing provided by Arts Council England. It is essential reading. Join a local or regional writing group and ask about their education team. I would encourage anyone in the South East to join New Writing South and start benefiting from the training, development, and mentoring schemes they offer to new and emerging writers. If you're a poet, make sure the Poetry Society knows what you're up to.

But most importantly, know what it is that you want to accomplish as a writer in schools. Kids can always smell a rat. Turn up well prepared with plenty of games and ideas to coax them into writing. Decide what skills you want them to flex and help them to flourish, help them to start and finish something that lets them communicate and play with words. Best of all, be a writer. Show them that it is how you live, how you see the world, and share with them the love that got you writing in the first place. Who knows where that could lead?

Notes from NAWE

2009-11-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the NAWE Conference in Southampton. NAWE is the National Association of Writers in Education - and boy am I learning a lot - but maybe not what I'm meant to be learning while I'm here. The conference is a mixture of "papers" (that's presentations in my book), hands-on workshops, and bar time - er, I meant networking.

First session today was Gilly Smith's Blogging. Gilly set up the Ning for NAWE and actively blogs. She got us all thinking about how we use blogs for ourselves and how (or if) we use blogs for students. As I typically work with teens I know they use Facebook - and I didn't know any who had their own websites or blogger sites until I found one was following me - Hey Grantt. I'm worried about issues of encouraging private writing by kids in places that can be happened upon by the public, so it's got me thinking that Nings are the way to go for encouraging blogging for the students I work with. Why blogging for them? Why blogging for any of us? Whether you blog to order your thoughts, to document your processes, or to think things through, blogs make a private space that leaves no trace. You can edit, delete, rewrite or let it archive your ideas, to return to when it suits you. Whether you blog as a cyber-diary or an e-blackboard, it is, as Gilly says, "solitude in a crowded place."

The afternoon was for a big discussion of how to get more writers into schools, and how schools can get more writers to come in. A bit sleepy now, so will blog on this in the morning, and on Graham Swift's reading/conversation, and maybe grapple, somehow, with what it is exactly that we are all hoping to achieve here - other than simply finding one another.

Have you got the balance right?

2009-11-08T03:49:00.000-08:00

In the writing and working life continuum, it's hard to keep a balance. One feeds you while the other you need to keep eating. You try to buy time from your working life so that you have time for your writing life, and you try not to sell your best hours to somebody else, because you need them for your own work. What do you do when schools want you at the crack of dawn - and morning is your writing time? Or if the school run slices through your creativity?

First off, you negotiate with yourself. Just as you can't write 24 hours a day (or at least I can't!) so you can't expect to tell your writer "later" ad infinitum. Set deadlines as hinges before particularly busy working times, and tell yourself that your own work is resting/composting/brewing while you do work for others. Find bits of time that you can shoehorn in to the times you are working for others - particularly if, like me, you run creative workshops and work with writers. If you aren't creating workshops that inspire your own writing - why not? If I ask others to write, it's only fair that I write, too. Or use the workshops to explore things you are interested in as a writer. Use that time to gather images, ideas for stories, or to remember what it feels like to learn new things, new ways of working, and how to play.

I am desperate to begin a rewrite - one that will take my whole writing head. But I have a big stint of work ahead that I must do for others - projects that require I pay attention and plan them well. It is up to me to work through this time with grace and good cheer. It's no one's fault if we don't have time enough to write. You must make the best of the time you have, and find a way to buy more time to write - even if you're buying that time from yourself.

How the Arts Council makes its decisions

2009-11-04T04:10:00.000-08:00

How do you feel about Arts Council England and how they fund artists and events? It probably depends on how your personal experience has been with them, and many artists and writers tell me regularly that it feels random - or tick-boxey.

Arts Council England published today their criteria for regular funding. You can download the document from the website here:

The Arts Council says: "Arts Council England currently provides around £350 million a year in regular funding to around 880 arts organisations. This money represents almost three quarters of our investment in the arts and is the most significant way in which we achieve our outcomes and pursue our mission to support great art for everyone. We have a strategy for the arts which underpins our decisions about funding for individual organisations. This document aims to describe the framework we use in making these decisions."

Have you been successful in an Arts Council bid, either securing core funding or a lottery one-off grant? East Kent Live Lit was successful this year - I think I'll go look at the criteria now and see if I missed some off my application! Haven't made a bid yet? Visit Katherine May's blogspot for tips on applying, here:

Creative Thinking and Work

2009-11-02T08:36:00.001-08:00

I spent today in a primary school working with teachers on using creative thinking as a tool for planning. After asking them to circumnavigate their school while holding 6 foot poles, fingertip to fingertip in pairs, groups, then unison, I asked them to take a tour of their school with fresh eyes, looking for a place where something extraordinary happened: something horrific, something magical, something amazing. I hoped they would invent these happenings and I was not disappointed. They took turns telling and embellishing their stories, in their groups, then were invited to raid the materials cupboard and the recycling box to get what they would need to provide "evidence" of the extraordinary: an artifact, a fossil, a footprint - and to install the artifact where the event happened. This is when the giggling began - as well as the questions: what is the point of this? are they cheating? how long do we have?

You can probably tell from this that I deliver workshops for Creative Partnerships - Future Create, as it's known in Kent. And it's a fine organization, particularly for its insistence that creative projects be co-planned, not only between practitioners and teachers, but with students to involve them in the planning as well. Staff training days like today's are a means to work on CPD, continuing professional development, and to insure that the "whole teacher" is looked at as much as the "whole child."

After the artifacts were installed, teachers were invited to go on a treasure hunt to find the other groups' installations and to imagine the stories that happened there, based on the evidence. This is not what the teachers had expected; they had practiced the telling of their own stories and were desperate to tell them. By asking them to now tell stories based on the evidence they witnessed, without knowing the initial story that had created the artifact, led to surprising outcomes and a reluctance to tell the story, for they could not be sure these new stories were "right." When I said that they "could not get it wrong" they clearly did not trust me.

When we moved on to a new activity, the teachers were still desperate to tell their own stories, the stories that had led them to crafting their installations: the springs erupting from shoes on the playground, where I could imagine a child had exploded; the small trail of glittery fairy dust; the door on the ground that could have led anywhere. We are all desperate to tell our stories, even when we aren't sure why we are making them up or we are only trying to "get it right." Once the story is created, it is dying to be told. And it nags us to tell it.

Ultimately, the artifacts will be left in place for their students' first day back after half-term tomorrow. I invited the teachers to invite their students on a treasure hunt and to see where the evidence they see will lead them. There are a million ways to introduce storytelling into a school environment. This is only one economical and eco-friendly way. From here, they can springboard to writing or creating their own stories to install. It may only lead to the sense that school is an extraordinary place where magical things can happen... and they will be right.

Staying Connected

2009-10-28T04:24:00.000-07:00

Alongside all these blogs and posts and tweets we do, there is still the matter of email and phones. Email is a snap with an iPhone - no longer do I have to trudge in from a day of workshops to scale a mountain of emails. Most emails can be dealt with by a quick yes or no or ta, mate, and with an iPhone I'm just about able to keep up. You Blackberry people will have known this for a long time, but for me it continues to be a revelation and a miracle. So much so, I routinely trawl TK Maxx looking for nice accessories to buy for my iPhone, even when I get them home and find they neither fit nor work. There is the separate issue, of course, of checking emails and tweets excessively while intending to write, but that is a separate post.

What I find increasingly hard to do, however, is to remember to use the iPhone as a phone. I am notoriously difficult to ring and prefer the distancing and time that emails afford. Am I a slacker? Or am I just trying to give myself more time? There is something about a phone ringing - even when it's the tasty "strum" that I have in my Preferences - that sets my teeth on edge. It can't just be me, can it? Ring - ring - answer me - right now. Maybe it is just me.

Writing emails is this week's dilemma. Specifically, how many to write and how to format them. When you're plugging shows, it's hard to get the balance right between raising consciousness and hectoring. And whatever format I send them in, somebody can't open them. Yes, I'm talking to you, Blackberry people. The eternal battle of Mac vs. PC is fought in my kitchen daily, and right now, PC is winning. Hopefully, a quick chat with a Genius has illuminated me a tad, and some advice from Club Shepway might serve to completely transform me. Who knows - I might feel so good I'll remember to switch my phone on!

How much is too much?

2009-10-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

I took a head count of the sites I manage this morning, and even I was surprised. How many sites and feeds and blogs and plates can you truly hope to keep spinning? Is there a way to combine or streamline any of them - or do they all accomplish different things?

There's the website for East Kent Live Lit, my desk job, and writing a blog for them. There's Twitter for them and for me, to stay in touch with friends all over the world and get news from my native LA Times... as it happens. There's my live lit for teens project, What are you doing here?, which is used to get information out and to archive the work they make. There's my own site, Notes from the Blue House, which is an on-line business card, I suppose. This new blog will feed into that one, when I remember to update the link. And there's a brand new blog and Twitter page that I'll blog very soon - and one that makes me terrifically excited about being a local artist and working in community.

They all do different things, to be sure. They exist to accomplish different outcomes, and their scope is narrow enough, I hope, for them to be specific and relevant to their individual readers. Only time will tell if I can keep them all up in the air! So... how many sites and spaces do you maintain? And what are they doing for you?

Is this another blog for writers?

2009-10-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Blogging writers choke cyberspace. Everywhere you hover your cursor there are tips and tricks for getting published or writing a query letter that will help you bob to the top of the slush pile. This is not one of those blogs, but there might be a link to one that is. There are loads of blogging mums who write, squeezing prose into her busy day and poetry out of her charming spawn. This is not one of those blogs, and I will do my level best never to mention my cat.

This is a blog that takes its inspiration from the blog I write for East Kent Live Lit, and all the sites and thoughts I see or have that somehow don't fit a live literature reader/audience. It also springboards from an idea Katherine May had, to create an on-line library of digital know-how, from sites and software to tools of the trade. Because a lot of us use more than pen and paper to make our work. As a writer and artist, I regularly run writing and creative workshops, as so many do. So, this blog will also address the workshop process, the funding process, and perhaps even the publishing process, should I find a way to jump through that gold hoop.

Is there room for another writing speed bump on the information superhighway? Gentlemen, start your engines.