READ ME!

Five ways to get your words read without a publisher

Most of us write in order to be read, but if you use your imagination, you don’t need to bookdeal in order to gain readers. I wrote these tips for an article on the Carrie and Danielle website earlier this year, from which this blog piece has been adapted.

1. In her excellent writing guide, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg talks about how she set up a poetry booth at a fete. She sat in front of a table and wrote poems then and there for people who came to her with ideas. This is such a great idea as it lets you share your love of writing with other people. If you don’t like the idea of instant writing, you can always print out your poems in advance, tie them up with pretty ribbon and sell them under their general themes – love, gardens, nature, or whatever it is you write about. It’s a great tool for fundraising, as well as bringing people pleasure as they choose, keep and read your poems.

2. Share your writing as a gift. I’ve never forgotten going for a walk in a wood one day and finding a poem about that beautiful place pinned up on a tree. Can you believe how it made my day? You can leave poems and pieces of writing for people to come across just like that, or maybe in old books in a second-hand store or taped on benches in your local park or tucked into menus in cafes or even on the bus for the next passenger after you to find. Use your imagination, and don’t be shy. I still think of that poem I found as a gift.

3. Exchange writing with a friend. Earlier this year, I spent a great month sharing poems with another writer. It started with a comment he sent me, ‘sharing is for grown ups’ (OK, OK, I’m not very good at sharing my chocolate!). So I sent him back a poem with this title, and was thrilled a couple of days later to receive a poem from him based on one of the lines in my poem – ‘funny how expensive nothing is.’ The exchange lasted for several poems, and each time it was a treat to see what the other wrote. And of course this was how the Messages Project got started, one of the things I'm most grateful for in my writing life so far.

4. Find a writing project to join in with on the internet. One I always enjoy is the Apple House Poetry site (run by my own collaborator, Lynne!). As well as proving prompts for inspiration, by posting your responses you will quickly become part of a writing community, reading other people’s work and having them read you in return. Also don't forget the prompts on the sidebar of this blog, or the Snaps I publish. I'm always happy to see the work produced as a result.

5. Make your own books. Try a self-publishing company like Lulu, or think about an ebook. There's a wealth of information on the internet when you start looking - try this youtube video (I love this woman!) and Alison Baverstock's Marketing Your Book is well worth a read.

Do let me know of any other ideas you might have too - or any successful projects you've been involved in. I love the whole generosity involved in sharing words, whether it's reading poems out loud on buses, or in Marks and Spencers. Hell, you can even knit yourself a poem!.

Read more:

* Five Ways to Write More


*Your Messages. (Warning - this website isn't operating now, but the Your Messages up there are definitely still worth reading!)

Golden - A snap

It was her mother who first called her Mrs Midas. That baby can turn even the direst situation to her benefit, she’d said. Luck, they all thought. She's too young to manipulate surely? Corinne listened, smiling to herself. Oh look, they cried. It’s almost as if she can understand us.

Read more:

* Work

* Missing

* Night Confessional

PERFECT - A SNAP

She argues with the builders daily. She wants to keep the house’s character. She likes the knobbly plastering, how the old doors swell in the rain. She is comforted when the uneven stairs creak. The builders smile, pretend to listen. And then they start smoothing the walls, ordering more plasterboard.


Read more:

* Clockwork

* Coventry

* Dust

AUTHENTICITY

“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” Judy Garland

Letter porn...

Nothing makes me happier than when I can ogle letters. Particularly when they make me laugh like this version of the alphabet did:



One day soon I'm going to make my own alphabet. In the meantime, if you come across any similar posts or indeed if you've made your own alphabet, I'd love to see them. Please share!

Similar posts:

* What Are You Doing, Sarah?

* Pop Up Alphabets

* The Last Pick'n'Mix Bag

Enjoying colour where I can find it...

... on a grey Sunday!

FIVE WAYS TO WRITE MORE

1. Write different. In the same way that sportsmen try different sports for ultimate fitness, try new things on the page. Force writing muscles you haven’t used to wake up. Write in structured forms – a sonnet or an alphabetically organised story. Or freewrite – let yourself go. Write poems, or an essay, or a short story, or the first five pages of a novel. The key thing is not to let yourself get into a rut.

2. Write more. It sounds obvious but are you trying to write the one perfect piece and so stifling yourself before you start? Or are you saving up your best thoughts and images for one particular story? Be generous on the page. The more you write, the more you will have to write about, and the quality will – eventually – start to shine through. In the book, Art and Fear, there is a description of an experiment in which a sculpture class were divided into two groups. Half were going to be assessed on how many sculptures they created no matter the quality. The other half on the one perfect sculpture, just one for the whole course. Guess which group produced the better sculptures – yep, that’s right. The ones who produced the most.

3. Form a habit. Write at a particular time of day, or on a particular day. Be disciplined about it. Dorothea Brande in her classic book, Becoming a Writer is very firm about this. You make a writing date and you stick to it.

4. Remember what you like about writing. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have complained that they can’t write but that they SHOULD be getting on with their poem, or their novel, or article. As if there’s someone forcing them to write. No wonder they don’t want to then. But, whisper this, the world will not collapse if we never write another poem. So somehow we have to get back to the joy of what we do. I find one of the best ways of doing this is to make a list of what I liked about the project in the first place, what I want it to achieve, what in a perfect world could happen to it, ie be published in The New Yorker! But if that doesn’t work – and it doesn’t always – I make another list of all the things I want to do when I’ve finished it and keep that to the side of the computer as a carrot.

5. And last but not least, turn off your internet. Now. Go on. Move away from the wi-fi, the twitter, the facebook, emails, blog reading. Use longhand if you must so you won't be tempted by the computer. I dare you!

Happy writing.

Related posts:

* On Refusing to Chose

Watching - a snap

He’s always preferred to watch the reaction of the audience to whatever is going on centre stage. By becoming part of something larger, he can forget himself. His ex-wife never understood. Look at me, she’d hissed at their wedding, but he’d gazed out instead. She never let him explain properly.

The Butterfly of the moment

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Vita Sackville-West

CREATIVE FREEDOM FOR CHRISTMAS

REASONS FOR WRITERS TO JOIN PEN BEFORE THIS YEAR IS OUT, AND NEXT YEAR TOO


1. Because writers need to stick together, and for me, sitting at my computer cosily writing fiction can sometimes mean I forget I'm part of the real world too. And just how lucky I am to have the choice.

2. Because PEN works "to promote literature and human rights. From defending the rights of persecuted writers to promoting literature in translation and running writing workshops in schools, English PEN seeks to promote literature as a means of greater understanding between the world's people." It also has cracking debates, events and possibly one of the best parties.

3. Because its current and recent campaigns include reforming the Libel Laws and challenging the Chinese authories to release prisoners jailed for expressing their opinion on air or in print. In addition, it supports writing in prisons, reading programmes with socially excluded groups including children, and supports literary translation in the UK.

4. Because their Seasons Greetings campaign, which organises seasonal greetings to imprisoned writers throughout the world to ensure they know they are not forgotten, reminded me just what a great organisation this is and how I've been meaning to post about it for some time.

Of course, the links above take you to English Pen. To go to the International Pen website, click here.

THAT/WHICH

One of the good things about my newish job at the London School of Economics is having to find stuff out. Interesting how often this will be answers to questions that have been hanging around in the back of my mind for some time.

Such as what's the difference between THAT and WHICH?

So here's my answer to the THAT/WHICH rule:

That is defining, and Which is not, so you would use That in a restrictive clause.

Er, yes. And...

I know, that helps me like a sack of potatoes too. How about if you use them in this way:

The essays that have to be in on Tuesday should be written in black ink

and

The essays, which have to be in on Tuesday, should be written in black ink.

See?

The THAT example implies that ONLY the essays that have to be in on Tuesday should be written in black ink, and the WHICH example suggests ALL the essays need to be both in on Tuesday and written in black ink.

I've looked back through my old stuff and I've - mostly - used these two words correctly so the rule must have been implanted many years ago, but I've never actually unpacked it before.

Call me anal, but I LOVE all this.

Any grammar questions/rules/tips you want to throw at me before the students put me on the spot will be gratefully received.


Related posts:

How are your sentences?

Writing Do's and Don'ts

I'm a Winnie the Pooh Fellow

Friends - a Snap

Molly is crying at work again, so we gather together to help. A makeover! We tell Molly to sit down. Apply blue eyeshadow. Take off our own clothes and dress her in them. Put ribbons in her hair. Feel better yet, we trill. We do, so she must. Mustn’t she?

MY NEW BABY'S FIRST REVIEW

GETTING THE PICTURE, my new novel coming out in April 2010, has just received its first review from Publishers Weekly and phew, they liked it!


Getting the Picture Sarah Salway. Ballantine, $15 paper (240p) ISBN 978-0-345-48101-6
Salway (Tell Me Everything) refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks in this breezy epistolary novel set in a British retirement home. Not that the residents of Pilgrim House don't know plenty of old tricks already: Salway's appreciation of her characters is refreshingly nonpatronizing—her oldsters have rich and naughty pasts, but live in the present, very much alive and eager to gossip, conspire, and seduce. George Griffiths is the archetypal stuffy widower, determined to control the behavior of anyone near him. He's also the only male resident of Pilgrim House until Martin Morris, a photographer who specializes in female nudes, moves in with his cameras and his photo collection. Martin's a schemer who, unbeknownst to George, had an affair with George's wife decades earlier and has been obsessed with her since; he saved all the letters he wrote her but never sent, and continues to write to her about his increasingly menacing plans. Although the epistolary device requires that some key revelations are reported from a distance, relationships and characters evolve nicely in this lighthearted novel about family and lovers and the not-so-lighthearted secrets that separate them. (Apr.)

BEST WRITING BOOKS

I've just opened a 'store' on Amazon so that I have somewhere to point people for all the writing and inspiration books I love and use for my own writing and teaching. It's got five parts:

THE CLASSICS

These are the books I pull down from my shelves the most often. Examples are Bonnie Friedman's Writing Past Dark which addresses many of the issues - jealousy, fear, self-belief - that writers don't often admit to, even amongst themselves, and Stephen King's On Writing - forget the autobiographical bit, his insights into the writing process are predictably brilliant!

INSPIRATION KICK-STARTS

I think this is going to end up being the biggest category. Even seeing these books together like this makes me smile. Here are the books I've scribbled over, adapted for my writing and teaching exercises, and most of all - and probably most important for me - sat back and just admired the writing and the writer. The best books let us look inside someone else's brain, and I like what I see in here!

GRIPPING DOCUMENTARIES

A relatively new passion for me, but here are the DVDs I've watched open-mouthed and open-journaled. Partly the subject matter, but also the discipline, new ways of thinking, and connections made in these films make me want to do better, write better, think better. What I Want My Words To Do To You is American format only but is an inside look at how teaching writing in a prison setting can bring people back to life again. It's moving and most of all, human. All writers should watch Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth at least once, if only to see how Star Wars was structured!

HOW TO READ AND WRITE POETRY

The shortest category so far, but these particular books are already dog eared and much much used.

WRITING MEMOIR AND ESSAYS

This is definitely in progress because it's the area I'm working in most at the moment. Watch this space!

Feast - a Snap*

Celebrating their marriage every day was Jody’s idea. Friends said she was mad. That Jake would be embarrassed. But he loved it. My wife, he’d croon. Today and every day. Eventually she introduced another ritual. She started going out without him to celebrate her hen night. Tonight and every night.

*A Snap is my new name for the 50 word photostories on this blog. Do feel free to join in too with your own responses to either the photo or the story, here via the comments or on your sites. Send me the link and I'll put it up!

WITH THE GREATEST RESPECT

LOO BOOKS

CONFESSION of the week - I have a selection of poetry books by my loo but I'm not going to name them in case I get chucked out of the poetic community before I've even got my foot over that hallowed doorway. I put it down to having the wonderful, Verse and Worse* anthology always in the bathroom when I was growing up. However, I'm loving this guest post on the Me and My Big Mouth blog by Phil Norman, author of the Closet Reading - 500 years of British Humour, a book that sounds as if it's definitely one for the Christmas list.

*ps - best Amazon review ever for V&W? There are an awful lot of poems where the humour depends on finding a Chinese or Dutch accent hilarious. From a Mrs L R Fisher. And I don't know why I should find her review so funny. But I do. I suspect Mrs L R Fisher would not approve.

Words on Writing

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all. ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

Maybe - a Snap (50 word photostory)

From Lorraine’s list of the things that might or might not be true – lipstick is made from crushed beetles; the top of the Empire State Building is officially in space; people can spontaneously combust; elephants bury their dead; birdsong is in dialect. That life will always be this good.

Clockwork - a Snap (50 word photostory)

Simone doesn’t swim like other people. At the swimming pool, everyone else sticks to straight lengths, but Simone goes round in circles. The others shout as she bumps into them. She’s not sure who is the most wound up – her or them, but at least she’ll stop. They won’t.

Bovine - a 50 word photo-story

The cows are listening to Estelle again. She's telling them that they are superior beasts, with more tastebuds, longer tongues and double the stomachs of normal creatures. Estelle preaches on and on until the cows wonder what it must be like to have such little ambition. To be so human-like.