Comma Short Story Writing Course

From February to July 2017, I'll be teaching a Comma Short Story Writing Course at Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds. The course is six months long, and consists of six two-hour workshops on the craft of short story writing. 

Writing the course has brought me back to thinking about my own development as a short story writer. When I first started writing short stories, way back in about 2006, I had little to guide me. All I knew were the things I'd taught myself, and I didn't know many other writers - I certainly hadn't got many other writer friends at that time - and as I counted up the rejection slips for the stories I sent out, I often asked myself: where am I going wrong? 

It was a very hard time, because although I knew I had some good ideas, and a level of good craft, I didn't have anybody to ask. 

I've been thinking about this a lot as I wrote the Comma press course. Over the past 10 years of trying, failing, trying, failing, and finally trying, and succeeding, to be a short story writer, I've learned an awful lot. It wasn't until I first started reading Raymond Carver in around 2009, that things finally started to click into place. 

The first Carver story I read was Neigbors. (There's a free PDF of it here.) It's short, like so many of Carver's stories - only 8 pages long, and on the surface of it, it doesn't seem to be about very much. A man and his wife agree to water a neighbour's plant, and look after their cat, while the neighbours are away for the weekend. Simple, right? 

I read it, and found myself thinking: this story is simple... almost too simple. Nothing really happens! Where's all the drama? The exploding cars? The discovery of an affair? The slapped face, the knife in the back? Needless to say, and probably because I'd been reading so much of Roald Dahl's short fiction prior to this, I really didn't get the Carver love. 

But something about the story stayed with me. For days afterwards, I kept on thinking about it. It was in thinking about the story in the following weeks that I came to realise - the drama is there; it's hidden under a veneer of respectability. It's lurking there, quietly, hidden amongst Carver's incredibly well-constructed sentences. It happened to me after the fact of reading Carver's story, as so often does with brilliant literature - I was hooked after the fact. 

Can it really contain all the things I remember, I asked myself? So I read it again, and yes, it did. I was amazed that a story could have the power to make me continue thinking about it for days afterwards, and have further realisations. 

The next thing I did was to take a book of Carver's entire published works out of the library. This book included the story So Much Water So Close to Home (originally published in Carver's collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love). This story, like so many of his other works, is incredibly short - just 7 pages - and yet it has everything. Drama - deceit - betrayal - an unbelievable sense of having the rug pulled out from under you; fully realised characters, a marriage and relationships that all seem completely real and believable - little wonder that Carver is considered one of the masters of modern realism. If you haven't read the story, I won't spoil it for you - I just recommend that you go and read it for yourself. 

Carver was my first introduction to absolute mastery in short story writing. What he could do in just a few short pages has never since been equalled by any other writer, in my opinion. 

In my Comma Short Story Writing Class we will discuss and learn from one of Carver's short stories; and in the following months we will discover, discuss and learn other short story writers too -- including several modern day writers. Each month the course will cover topics like structure, creation of tension, creating character, and editing and endings. 

Every month there will be writing exercises - I will be asking every participant to write a short piece in every single workshop, so there will be plenty of time for writing itself, too. 

Numbers on the course are limited - which will allow every participant the chance to have at least some of their work read and critiqued. At the end of the course, following our final class - which will be a session on Editing & Endings - all participants will have the opportunity to have their stories published in an e-Book by Comma. Two reduced fee places are available for writers who are single parents or in receipt of benefits - email Becky at Comma Press to book one of these places (address at the bottom of this link) 

You can book onto the course through the Carriageworks website or by calling their Box Office on (0113) 376 0318. 

Look forward to seeing some of you there!

Currently reading

Foreigners Caryl Phillips

Homeland Cory Doctorow 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Short Story Writing

Hello, readers.

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog (hello, four people) will know I'm not generally in the business of going around telling other people what to do. I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination, and also generally think people should find their own way to do things. But recently, having had a bit of success having my own short fiction published, I've had a few writers approach me for help. So I decided to do a little blog post about my own approach to writing short fiction. Hopefully some of you will find it helpful. You can take what you take and leave what you leave. It's not intended to be definitive....

Ideas

I have these all the time. They come from all sorts of places. Maybe I overhear a funny argument in the supermarket, or see somebody nearly fall off their bike. Maybe I have an idea during the day while I'm at work. Often these ideas need a bit of time to fully form into something that could be a story. Either way, I write my ideas down in a notebook small enough to carry around everywhere. That way I've always got something to work from.

I often find that the best short story ideas come when my brain is partly occupied in something else, like washing up. This is pretty common. It's when your conscious brain is occupied that your unconscious can have a little bit of a skip about and come up with something good. So my advice here is, pay attention to your daydreams.

Work

Write every day, or as close to it as you can manage. Set aside writing time and don't let anybody or anything interrupt it. Get used to having to say no to things. People might assume that you can write any time, and try to intrude upon your writing time. “You can write any day!” they'll tell you. NOT TRUE. Discipline yourself to write when you say you're going to write. Don't make the mistake of thinking you'll do it later. For reference, my excuse to say no to things is always, “I'm working that day.” Nobody will try to persuade you to skive off work to go out drinking, or whatever. As excuses go, it's solid gold.

Write your story

Do whatever it takes to get it done. There's that piece of advice from Neil Gaiman that says, “Whatever it takes to finish it, finish it.” It's such good advice. Finish everything you start, even if you start to think it's total bollocks halfway through. Finish it anyway. It's good practise, and you'll never be a writer if you don't. No excuses.

Rewriting & editing

Another piece of advice from a great: this time, the graphic novelist Chris Ware. “Work hard. And then when you think you can't work any harder – work a little bit more.” So true. Look at the standard of published work in the best places. It's so high. Sure, if you don't want to aim for good publications, there are always ways to get your work out there. You can get them in a local free paper, or put them out yourself. And if you want to do things that way, you should. But the danger is that doing things that way doesn't force you to work hard. If you want good publication, you have to really put yourself through the mill. More so than may even seem possible.

For some people, this is where the real wailing and gnashing of teeth begins. For me, certified nerd, this is my favourite part of the process. I usually spend at least twice as much time rewriting and editing as I did writing the first draft – and sometimes longer. I often think that more than half the battle to be a good writer is in learning to be really ruthless. Don't let yourself get away with anything. Look for sloppy sentence structure, parts of the story that don't contribute to the whole. Tear anything out that doesn't work. Does it hurt? Yes, good. It ought to.

If it helps, write a one-sentence summary of what the story is about. For example, for my story Top Dog, the sentence would probably be: “A story about finding value in simple pleasures; in finding the worth in something others discard.” As I go through the story, I look for resonances to this central theme in everything, and bin things that don't contribute to it. Sometimes it hurts to take things out. Usually I paste the cut sections into a separate document. I tell myself, “I can put this back in later if it turns out the story needs it.” It's a bit of a psychological crutch. Most usually, it turns out the story doesn't need what I'm throwing away. But it's there just in case. Ha! I fooled myself! Way to go, me!

Learning to bin things you like is hard at first, but it's worth doing. It totally serves your writing in the end. You might be writing about sentimental things, but you don't have to be sentimental in how you go about it.

Marinade

With short fiction, I always think it's worth going away and coming back, going away and coming back. Work on something else between finishing the draft and the first edit, and between the first edit and the second. You will always see things much more clearly this way. It places a bit of distance between you and it, and lets you be a bit more objective. Really good short fiction is a bit deceptive. The simplest-seeming stories, those that seem effortless, are the ones that take the most labour to write. So go away and come back. But! NEVER use going away as an excuse to never come back. You must ALWAYS finish things. Even if you still think it's bollocks at the end. It's all a process. You have to go through it over and over again, before you get to the point where you'll do anything you're happy with. The lesson: you'll never get anywhere if you don't finish.

Practise, practise, practise

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Sure, writing short stories is never easy (where would be the fun in that?) - but the more you write short fiction, the more confidence you'll have about doing it. Your early attempts may well be a bit derivative. Don't beat yourself up about that. All the best writers go through that. Nobody ever wrote a story as good as “I could see the smallest things” first time out of the gate. Just keep going.

Currently reading

Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden

Appearance in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal

I'm really excited to announce that my story Top Dog will appear in the December issue of US lit journal Toasted Cheese. The issue will go online in the first week of December, I believe.

Really exciting news & I'm grateful to the editors of Toasted Cheese for taking an interest in my work.

Currently reading

The Blindfold Siri Hustvedt
Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You Alice Munro

I didn't get where I am today by ignoring internal logic problems

People define writerly success in different ways. For me, success as a writer means being able to produce work you can be proud of; and for your work to get published regularly. Writing is hard, a fact universally acknowledged by everyone from Dan Brown to Tobias Wolff. For what it's worth, here's my bullet point guide for writing success, The Bradley Way. 

1. Read. Read all the time. Read everything, from literary prizewinners to the most commercial trash. Most of all, read short fiction by the best short story writers. You will laugh, you will cry, you will despair by comparison the shortcomings in your own work to those of the greats. And then you will get back to your desk and you will work hard, until your own work no longer shames you. 

2. Write. Try to either work part time, or find a job that allows you to write at work (hospital porter, security guard, night-watchman). It's better if your day job has nothing to do with writing. That way you're brought into regular contact with a wider range of people and situations. And write every day. Be strict. Let nobody come between you and it. This is hard. You're still young, and you want to have fun. But here you are missing out on films, gigs, parties - hell, maybe even entire friendships. Well, suck it up. You're a writer now. 

2b. Accept that your life will not follow a usual trajectory. You'll see your peers have lovely things; they'll wriggle up the career ladder at work, while you concentrate your energies on writing. Your friends will most likely live in a bigger, nicer house than you. You, in contrast, will spend hours scratching away at a desk, making up stories in your head, earning no money, and receiving legions upon legions of form rejections (or at least, at first). In social situations people will ask how the writing's going, and you will want to cry. You might feel like saying: "Writing is ruining my life." I don't have any answers for this, other than that if you want to live in a big house and have a steady, reliable stream of income, you might want to rethink your career options. 

3. Say no to things. People will want you to write things for them for free. They'll want you to run workshops and classes. Think carefully about accepting. If you take on everything you're offered, you can soon find yourself with no writing time at all. You'll often find yourself having to say no regretfully. I worked for a couple of years in a letterpress collective, something I absolutely loved doing. But it ate into my writing time, and when I gave it up my publishing rate doubled within a matter of months. At some stage you have to learn to say no. 

4. Don't compromise. In Writing Posthumously, Jeffrey Eugenides advised new writers: "Don't go along with the crowd". Other writers might be doing things that are more trendy. They might have quicker pay-offs, get published more easily, and get more plaudits. Don't worry about them. Just worry about what you're doing. Forge your own path. Work hard, and write what you want to write. If you're doing something groundbreaking, you might struggle to get it published. But don't worry. Keep your eye on the long game, and make sure that what you're doing is exceptionally good. Have mercilessly high standards. Beat yourself up for not being good enough. And then go back to your desk and work some more. 

6. Systematic, bloody-minded persistence. Your early work will most likely be fairly rubbish. Hell, your work might be rubbish for quite a few years - mine certainly was. Your short stories will be dreary and derivative, and your first novel will most likely stink beyond belief. Most of the writers I know have at least one Novel of Shame hidden away in a drawer somewhere. Hell, I've got two. How do you get better? You keep writing. You keep working. You keep going. How do you get published? You keep working. You keep improving. You get better. You keep going. 

Currently reading

William Faulkner As I Lay Dying

Jennifer Egan A Visit From The Goon Squad

Submit, submit!

Last year, there was an inspiring piece on The Review Review called "Yes, Your Submission Phobia is Holding You Back". Having published short fiction at an embarrassingly low rate since 2010 (1 a year - go me!), one sentence in particular stuck out: "You think rejection is proof that you have no talent or that the work is no good. Actually, the only thing a rejection proves is that you sent out your work." 

2013 has been the first year ever - ever - when I've had stories plural published (here, in the LS13 anthology, and here, in the Willesden Herald anthology). And it's still only June! I'm hoping to have at least two more published before the end of the year. The only way I can improve my embarrassing strike rate of 1 story per year, I realised, was to get my work off my hard drive and out into the world. 

So, I developed a system. Being something of a systems nerd (there's no cure, apparently), I worked out a way of tracking submissions using a spreadsheet*. Doing this helps the whole process so much less painful. I am sharing this spreadsheet with you, everybody on the whole of the internet, because I'm nice like that. 

In day to day internet browsing, I keep an eye out for submission opportunities. If I see a competition I want to enter, or a lit mag with its submission window open, I add it to my spreadsheet in the lower columns, making a note of the closing date and word limit. If I think one of the stories I have ready is worth trying in one of these competitions, I put the magazine's name next to that story title. (see spreadsheet for illustration). The whole thing is colour-coded. Blue for acceptances, Red for submissions, Black for places to try, Green for rejections, and Purple for stories I have withdrawn myself. This last one is key, and a kind thing to do for other writers. If a story gets accepted for publication somewhere, I make sure to contact the other places and withdraw it. This allows editorial teams to reduce the size of their slush pile, and get back to other writers more quickly. It's only fair. 

The bookmarking and updating of the spreadsheet is something I do as I'm going along, but the submitting is something I set aside time for. Many of the magazines have slightly differing formatting requirements, and that in itself takes time. I set aside a couple of hours every month to get the stories I'm sending out into the right format, and then I send stories out - at the moment, I'm doing at least 2 a month. It's good to set a target for yourself, because then you're in the position of actually having to look out for appropriate submission opportunities. And please, for the love of God, make sure you're sending your work to the kind of places that are likely to publish it. Don't waste your time sending pulpy science fiction to Granta. You're only setting yourself up for disappointment. Know what kind of work you make, and what kind of magazines like it. Your submissions process will only ever end in tears otherwise. 

One last thing. I always save my finished stories in two different versions - one that's been through a UK English spellcheck, and one that's been through a US English spellcheck. This makes it easier and quicker for sending versions out internationally. 

Thanks for reading, and happy submitting! 

Currently reading

Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut

Best of Young Brazilian Novelists Granta