Zineton and Scotstober 2022

This weekend feels a bit like the last hurrah. University starts soon and I know any free time I have will be focussed on that. The weather is beautifully autumnal, leaves glowing with sunlight as if it's putting all their energy into one last show. It's infusing the poems I'm trying to write. And I'm writing which hasn't happened much lately. 

This weekend is Zineton, a 48-hour challenge to create a zine. Helsinki Writers are having their second go at it. I've discovered a fun AI art site Wombo which is making it even more interesting as I really don't have any talent for visual art. So I'm writing a couple of poems for that and waiting for the other writers to send me their work. Then the rush to put everything together begins. 

One of my pieces is inspired by #scotstober, which introduces one new Scots word every day in October. I also joined in that challenge last year where I found poems or snippets of poetry that used the Word of the Day and expanded it to share a bit about the writers. Here's a link to the first of a series of blogs where I shared my Twitter posts and more information.   This year I don't think I'll have the time for that. The poem I'm writing in Scots doesn't use the words but is inspired by them. I'll maybe write a line on Twitter about the WotD when I remember. 

And to finish off, here's a link to the recording of members of Helsinki Writers (Leah Martin, Csilla Csépke, Saara Kahra and Gerry Stewart) reading their poems on the theme of Under the Surface. Thanks to the support of Helsinki Open Waves and CAISA where the poems were recorded. It was an amazing experience for the group. 

Breath and the Poet

I've been thinking about the poetic breath this week, how poets use punctuation and line breaks to direct the reader. I've been reading my own collection out-loud, listening for mistakes and difficult phrasing, but also how the speed of the poem is directed by these little internal controls. I've also recorded a couple of poems recently which requires you to slow them down even more for clarity. 

A poet in my writing group said he uses line breaks like punctuation, but then we noticed he used both randomly in his poem we were discussing and when he didn't pay attention to it, it lead to confusion for me. I'm not sure if he'll change it, but it was good to discuss.

Some poets are hyper-aware of how they use punctuation and line breaks to add emphasis and control how the poem is read. I enjoy this, read their work out-loud, measuring how I read to their layout. Short or long lines, big pauses and smaller intakes of breath, commas, full stops, line ends, it lends life to the poem that isn't always felt on the page.

I'm wary when reading other poets' work of placing my values on how they create pauses for breath in a poem. I read a poem this week that seemed so badly broken up for no reason that it made it painful to follow, sentences broken repeatedly across stanzas it seemed just to keep the two stanza format going. It made me wish to hear the poet read his own poem, so I could understand how he envisioned the poem. 

It's worse when editing, so if I query a comma or line break in a poem, I have to stand back and look at it without my own poet's lenses on. Usually, I discuss it with the author just to make sure it's not my voice I'm imposing on their poem. 

I often tell my writing students to use their layout and punctuation wisely, keep line endings strong so the image or sound carries to the next line, unless you're making a point by breaking it on a less poignant word or mid-sentence. But I realise that this is a personal thing, not every poet follows the same rules, just like some poet like to capitalise each line of a poem, mid-sentence or not. 

And I'm aware I'm not always great at it myself, sometimes I get caught up in the image or how the format is working that I forget to listen to how my poem sounds when it's read. Sharing my work out at my group is often most helpful just because I hear where it's going wrong with the line breaks and rhythm. Having a dramatist in the group is also beneficial for this as he is quick not notice stumbles as well.

It's something to play with, to ponder, to challenge oneself with as a poet.

For a GloPoWriMo challenge, focus on the breath in a poem. Pick a moment where breath is essential or obvious and write about it for 15 minutes. You could try and reproduce that feeling of breathlessness after a run or the faltering proposal of a shy teenage asking for a date or the adrenaline-fueled excitement of a rave. 

Then take some time reshaping the poem, so you direct the reader's breath as they move through your sentences. How can changing the line length, adding pauses through punctuation or line breaks affect the reading of your poem? Can you control how it's read or where the emphasis is placed? 

In GloPoWriMo news, I've started a few poems this week, but not every day as expected. Some days it was just scribbled notes, other times I've managed to sketch a rough draft of a poem. 

I've taken to using poetry as my 'pause. be.' time. Our school counsellor runs a lesson where she teaches the kids breathing and calming techniques. I take myself into a corner a write poetry as a way to decompress. I've never been able to meditate as my brain is always firing at full blast, so this seems a good compromise. 

How's your GloPoWriMo going?

Seasonal Changes

My garden is a gold splash of autumn, my favourite season. Apples thudding onto the unmowed grass, the buttery sun catching the red leaves of the maples. I have an urge to tidy and gather in supplies, inside and out, to finish harvesting my allotment and ready it for winter, to clear the flower beds of debris, to pack away tools for my winter hibernation. 

With words, I've been kicking through my poems like fallen leaves, noticing a gem here, a spoiled windfall there. I edit a line, I submit a few poems, slowly. There is no urgency with my work, though I know time is running short there as well. My course starts up again tomorrow, I have a book review due in a few days, but I layer words a few at a time, waiting for them to build up into some rich mélange. 

My writing group is planning to go back to face-to-face meetings next week. I can't attend the first one, but with our second wave starting, I have to admit I'm nervous of jumping back into that part of normal life. Not all of it has to do with the virus. I've enjoyed having an online side of my writing life. I've joined mentoring, virtual book launches and workshops in the UK along with my local writing group from the comfort of my home. Being in Finland I wouldn't be able to take advantage of many of these opportunities without the impetus driven by the various lockdowns around the world. 

It's less stressful being online when you have kids and unreliable support, but I also find the social side easier. Seeing everyone in front of me, having to unmute to take my turn makes it easier for me to read social cues. I'm probably still awkward and too vocal, but somehow it's easier to step back and take a moment than when I'm caught up in the pressure of being surrounded by people, trying to find the right time to speak up.

It's a toss-up. I'm afraid online events will dwindle again and I'll be isolated here in my corner of Europe, but it will be good to try and make more local events, now that I've made some connections.  

We'll see what the next few weeks bring, infections are ramping up here, more restrictions coming along. I may not get the chance to see my friends for long, so should maybe jump at it, even masked up. 

Enjoy your week.  

Autumn Scramble

I'm not used to this working full-time thing. OK, almost full-time, as I had Thursday off from school as it was a half day and it's cheaper to get someone already on site to cover for a couple of hours, but otherwise I slogged it out with preschoolers all week. They are exhausting. 

Then the weekend slips by too fast, even with one day child free. I sat and worked on catch-up for my course and poetry all day yesterday and I still feel like I haven't accomplished enough. I've ignored all my housework, so there's that guilt too. There's really no winning. 

I'm trying to write a few new poems to finish my newest proposed collection and editing a poem I've found some new research on. I've never tried to fill in gaps in a collection with poems about specific ideas. It's hard as I usually write more organically, but this collection has a theme of 'strong women' as an over-riding arc and I realised that I need more that follow it and examine it from different angles where other poems I want to include are more loosely connected. 

I don't want these poems I'm writing now to feel forced and I haven't quite got an organic spark for this latest one. So I'm tip-toeing around it, writing notes about images and a few lines, but at the moment it feels very telling and unfocused. I have a deadline for the end of the month I'd like to meet, so need to get it finished. 

The sun is finally shining after a rough, rainy week, so I hope to go out to the allotment today. The girls have been selling my excess courgettes this week and want to see if any others are ready. I have had a serious glut of them this year. They grow to marrows so quickly. The kids are tired of courgette bread and the veg in pasta sauces. I have a freezer full of grated courgette as well. I was surprised anyone bought them as they aren't a traditional Finnish veg and most people I've given them away to haven't known what to do with them, but they shifted over a dozen of them at fifty cents each. I'll try and get as much in as I can before the wet gets to them, but I think the plot is winding down. I still have a lot of winter digging to get started on. 

So much to do, but I'd rather have that problem than the opposite. Make the most of this harvest time. 

The Nitty Gritty

School was over-whelming this week, so challenging and fun. I worked as a classroom assistant, specifically with two kids who barely spoke English and who were struggling to settle into their new class. We had some bumpy moments, but by Friday they had both smiled a few times and engaged with me. I had a Harry Potter magic battle with one and cooed over puppy pictures with another. We also managed to do some work connected with what the class was doing. I left school elated, exhausted and somewhat disappointed that this is just a temporary gig. But after my frustration with teaching last year, I'm looking forward to the next challenge this school throws at me. 

So I had no chance to write during the week, but I took a lot of time this weekend to focus on editing, submitting and general organising of my poems and collections. I put a joking comment on Twitter about my horror at finding an old poem that used a word three times. It wasn't an important word or done for any particular reason, I just never noticed that I used 'clean' in three different ways. 

I'm sure it seems a minor issue, but my writing group knows it's one of my pet peeves for my own work. I want my words to have some power in their use and I feel overuse weakens that. Three times shows to me that I haven't really pushed my linguistic skills and feels redundant. Was 'clean' a theme of the poem I hadn't noticed, was I trying to express something through my word choice or was I just being lazy? I decided the latter. The poems wasn't affected when I found different ways of saying 'clean' in two of the three spots. 

It made me wonder how many other unintentional 'mistakes' I've missed in my proof-reading over the years. I'm aware I sometimes reuse words or images as themes throughout a set of poems, Do we, as writers, sometimes get stuck on a riff and not notice? 

A mentor I once had wrote a book with an uncommon, but not unused, word in the title. Our group spent over a year working with her, sharing our work and almost all of us somehow managed to put the word in one of our texts, often without realising it. She was hyper-aware of the word, of course, so eventually pointed it out to the class, so I'm sure most of us edited it out. I think her editor eventually changed the title, but it showed how we were sponges at her feet.

Today, I found I used the word 'mossy' in two poems that I would probably later consider placing together. Again, it's no big deal until they are actually sitting in a collection together. They were written about the same time, so I wonder if I had that idea on my mind. One was a mossy carpet and one was mossy light, so different images, but with both were used to suggest overgrown abandoned areas, one from above and one from below. Not sure how or which to replace or if I need to at all, but I love this level of getting down to the nitty gritty of language when editing. 

I didn't get that Editorial Manager job I applied for. We all realised I'm a word person, not a people and process person and they really wanted someone with the knowledge to streamline those rather than edit texts. So I wasn't too disappointed and they said they hope to hire some plain old editors in the future, so my CV is being kept aside. In the meantime, I will continue to play with my own words. 

Gearing up and Down Sizing

The schools have started back and we're in that transition period where the scheduling begins, the afternoons fill with hobbies and lessons and we shuffle them around until we can manage. My morning are quieter, but without a flow yet. I am still running around and catching up on errands, so haven't found a rhythm to fit my poetry in regularly. And being a substitute I'm always slightly on edge waiting for the phone to break into the silence. My interview is also coming up this week, so it's nipping at the edge of my mind as well. 

One thing I've started this week is reviewing my poems in consideration of an A5 page size. Suna Afshan at Poetry Birmingham Journal made an off-the-cuff remark on Twitter asking those  submitting to stop formatting poems in A4 docs. It caused a flurry of tweets of confusion, ah ha moments, discussion and it got me thinking. Print magazines and collections do mostly print in A5 or a similar size, so it makes sense. Though most also seem to ask for submissions in A4 (even PBJ), so maybe the industry needs to rethink things as well. 

I do often look at potential collections from that format, but I have never considered using that size to type my poems from the beginning. So it's thrown my work in disarray. I've changed all my potential collections and my rough draft files to A5 and am looking at how it changes the lay-out of the poems. I'm not rewriting many yet, but it is making me see things differently. 

I've noticed my newer poems do run shorter and fit in A5 comfortably for the most part, but my upcoming collection is mostly older poems and is sitting at over the page limit at the moment. I need to find out what size and style of font my publisher uses. I don't mind splitting a poem over two pages if necessary, but three or four lines dangling over looks wrong. I'm unsure what to do about those extra 5 pages I've suddenly gained.

Of course, for online magazines it's less of an issue. Magazines and competitions usually specify A4 and around a 40 line limit, but my lay-out is running about 28 lines to a page (2cm margins top and bottom, 11pt Arial font for text and a 16pt title.) One of the benefits of being trained in editing at a small magazine is I learned little tricks to make a poem fit on a page, how to lay out a book so it looks good, but I won't be able to do that with my collection being published.  

It's a small thing really, but I feel better using the A5 format from now on. I'll still write my poems first in my notebook, not caring about length or format, but it will be a consideration when editing and designing collections. And, of course, I'm definitely not suggesting that poets should write to please editors and to fit publications, but it helps to know how a poem will look on the page and if we're using A4 as our template the printed product may not look how we imagined. 

I'm also trying to get back into reviewing and reading poetry collections, so I read a few poems every night before bed, the one time I can be sure I have time. I have turned back to Fiona Benson's Vertigo and Ghost which I started last year. This is one of those collections I wish I had written, but not lived. Such beautiful writing that tears me apart emotionally. Even the more gentle ones about parenthood and the poet's fears connected with raising her girls in this difficult world when other mothers are leading their children through unimaginable dangers in the hope of finding safety and shelter dig into all my tender places. But Part One which is considers the mythology of Zeus in modern terms, as a serial rapist, is more of a punch to the throat. Benson plays with the words on the page, mixing modern language with ancient stories and uses a kind of interview format to give voices to the victims, Io, Callisto and others, as well as bragging, bravado-puffed Zeus. It goes much further than Yeats' 'Leda and the Swan'. Difficult to read as it doesn't shy from blunt emotion and descriptions, it is an important voice in these times when 'Me Too' is not a thing you wish to say, but it needs to be heard. 

I've been commissioned to write a review for a poetry collection late in the autumn, but more about that later. 

I'm off to edit and later enjoy some late summer sun. 

Going Home

First day of holiday and the kids and I have started the gingerbread house, made our annual Christmas decorations and I've lost my patience with their fighting, but I haven't written a line of poetry or done any editing on my collection. I've done none of my poetry reading either, so no review this week. This impossible balancing act of life and art. Even when work is taken out of the mix, I can't keep on top of it all. Tomorrow, we need to get out of the house, so I need to try and fit in some work in the morning or afterwards. I must get back into the habit.

When my babies were little and we were struggling with their sleep habits I read somewhere that it takes six times as long to break a habit than to make it. It's so easy to not write a poem a day, not squeeze in the time to write or edit around work, but to build up that habit again is more of a struggle. It requires force of willpower to not take the easy route and turn on the telly after the kids go to bed, to not stare at a screen without writing something useful on it. 

So I've cracked open the collection tonight, stepping into the cold Scottish rain again of my poems, the hard gray stone and cups of tea. The images I draw together for the cover. Wool and sand, loch and Glasgow streets. Touching the words I've written again. It's like going home.

I'm looking forward to seeing this chapbook, but there's a sense of regret to finish it, to close the book on things I've been working on for almost two decades. Also to not be publishing the whole collection, though these are my favourite poems from it. And the poems I'm not publishing are more difficult to face just now, stepping back into the muddied waters of my old relationship which I'm happy not to ford just now.

I'm moving slowly back into the words, to find my way through them again. 

Targets and Black Holes

I've been teaching almost every day this week, adding a new school to my list, so that has been keeping me busy. My bank account says, 'long may that continue', but my writing mind wishes for more slow days.

I've managed a few poems written in staff rooms and had a few acceptances as well as a few rejections, some of which have come a few days after submission which feels a bit weird. It's a relief not to have to wait almost a year like some magazines. 

I've hit my 100 rejection target and I can see the positive results in the numbers. I've submitted about twice as many so far this year and have had about a 12% acceptance rate which of course I'm very happy with. The daily writing I've done most of the year has helped as I have a good amount of poems to submit, but it has been hard work. 

I no longer edit a poem every time I submit it, though I do proof it for errors. I maybe cast a more serious eye of them every few submissions, longer if they've had a quick turnaround. I still research the magazines as much as I can, via guidelines, masthead blurbs and looking at old issues if I can, but I am more open to online magazines. I currently have a big backlog of unsubmitted poems, just because I don't have the time or energy to do tons of submissions. 

I'm putting a tender in for a big editing job which I'm looking forward to. It's copyediting, bringing the text up to the publishers standards of formatting and layout, so requires more repetition (looking at how references are noted, standardising to British English) and less tidying up the language. 

I'm trying to get myself ready for the end of year madness, but really just want to skip to spring. I hate going to work and coming home in darkness, the struggle to get outside when its dreich, the stress of getting the kids to accept they need proper outdoor clothing. 

The writing course I'm on has been a nice distraction, it's focus is works found in several museums, art and artefacts. So I've been losing myself in research black holes about photograms, gum diggers, curiosity cabinents and other unexpected subjects. I try not to spend too much time researching, but sometimes jumping from one subject to another is how I find the sweet spot from which a poem can spring. 

Roller Coastering

It should be a verb, shouldn't it? It's been one of those weeks where I feel like I'm going to be sick from the ups and downs of my new work career.

Last Tuesday I had a Skype interview for an internship for a start-up social media company. It was for a position as a Content Writer, writing articles about travel and expat life, two things I am interested in. I was offered the post, but in the end turned it down because a) I wasn't happy working for 6 months for no pay, especially after I read a review of the company that suggested that they only took on a stream of unpaid interns rather than paid staff and b) I didn't enjoy the technology side enough to really want to use up time I could be getting other work churning out articles that used less of my writing skills and more of my ability to link to other sites. It may be a choice I regret, but I feel like I've been true to who I want to be.

A nice affirmation that I've maybe made the right decsion for me was that on the same day I turned down the offer an editor rejected some poems I had sent in for their online journal, but suggested, having seen my link to this page, that I might like to write a guest blog instead. Unpaid again, there's a blog post in the future about working for free, but it's a single article on a subject I'm more interested in and in a style that's more comfortable to me. Details to follow when the blog goes live.

I've also been working for my first editing client here in Finland. So hopefully things are going more in the direction I prefer. Small steps.

As a break from the less creative work, I've decided to take some of the extra poems I have rattling about and create another collection. My Scottish and Finnish books are still sitting at various publishers and could be for ages yet and I felt like I was missing out on good opportunities that were floating by. This collection moves beyond culture and place and looks more at the individual's attempts to come to define themselves as they come to terms with their struggles.

I find something really satisfying and almost meditative about putting together a collection, sorting through poems to find ones that fit my theme, figuring out an order, editing and then trying to write a synopsis to bring the whole idea together. I love carrying the rough draft manuscript around, editing each poem and shuffling through the pages. Holding close the warm knowledge that I made this, each word knitted together as a poem and then each poem layered to make a book. Hopefully they build upon each other to create a strong whole. The chance that it will get accepted is slim, but I enjoy the process in a different way to writing. 

It's good to have a break from the slog of reality with something you love. 

Back to Work and to Barnhill

I've started back into writing slowly after my long break. I'm not currently doing a poem-a-day prompt, but working everyday on older poems. I'm editing those started on my last two month-long courses, focussing the language and intent. A few are ready to submit to journals, along with the pile of rejections that came in while I was away. I've noticed most American magazines seem to be on hiatus, but the British ones are still working on backlogs. 

I'm also going through some of my old journals for details of poems I've had on the back burner because I couldn't remember what actually happened. It's lovely how they have jogged my memory and taken me back to those places and times. Little details I have forgotten or placed onto different scenes brought into firm focus. Unfortunately, I didn't write about everything. Moments that seem important now often didn't get mentioned in my journals at all, either because they didn't seem of consequence at the time or life just got in the way of writing. I've never been one for writing every day which would help to rebuild moments later. 

I'm starting new poems on specific subjects that I decided I wanted to write about when I was travelling. I will start a new poetry course in August, so this seems to be a good way to get back into that more intensive work.

I finished reading Norman Bissell's Barnhill and it was a surprise as I bought it mostly on the connection with the place, rather than anything to do with George Orwell. I thought it would be more of a biography, but it's a biographical novel based on George Orwell's later years, especially those in connection with Jura and Barnhill and the writing of 1984. Less dry quoting of dates and details and more trying to capture the writer and his obsessions with writing, Jura and creating a strong family for his son.

I knew very little of Orwell's life, so learning about his connection with the Spanish Civil War, his marital and other relations and his illness were all very intruiging. Bissell also included the point of view of Orwell's second wife Sonia Brownell whose voice unexpectantly pops up and gives the reader new insight. The book also illustrates how Orwell might have drawn details from his own experiences when writing 1984.

While Barnhill tries to stick strongly to the facts of Orwell's life and there is a list at the end of known details which contribute to the story, it's the scenes where Bissell allows himself to imagine Orwell that the man really comes alive for me, spending Hogmanay in Glasgow, his worries about finishing his book when he knows he's dying and the connections he had with his friends. 

Though Bissell is a poet and director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics he doesn't get caught up in the romanticism of Jura and life alone there which must be difficult to do as I was overawed by the place when I visited. The attention to Orwell's physical life there, taking care of the garden and fixing machinery sometimes taken from entries in Orwell's journal feels very focussed and fits in with the George Orwell drawn in the novel. I could very well remember my journey down the 'Long Road' to get to Barnhill from Ardlussa as I read Bissell's description of cars and motorbikes breaking down while trying to get along it.

I could occasionally feel a modern voice of hindsight coming in which felt as if it wanted to make sure the reader could see how spot on George Orwell was in his predictions of Big Brother and his fears of government control. When they came from George's mouth they worked, felt in character, but sometimes the narrative pushed too much. But I have to admit with the way current media and politics is going, I would have found it hard to resist pointing out the connections as well. I recently reread 1984 and was gobsmacked about how much closer we were creeping towards Orwell's nightmare vision than when I first read it in 1984 in high school in America . 

Overall, I enjoyed the book, it was informative, but it created a rounded and interesting view of Orwell's character and the time he was living in. The novel manages to illustrate the complexities of a difficult man who allowed little of his personal life to be seen by adding a greater depth to his novel masterpiece.

Finding Balance

One word that kept coming up in my recent mentoring discussion with Angela Carr was 'balance' and it's a word I use a lot in my creative writing teaching as well. We as writers struggle to achieve balance in so many different ways.

A poem or story hangs on many fine threads; imagery, background information, action, language, emotion, and the author attempts to keep them all balanced between what the reader needs to understand the piece and what the author themselves desires of their work. If the language is too difficult to follow or the emotion not well-presented or if the writers tells too much, breaking the threads, the connection to the reader can be lost. 

A balance between what is presented on the page and what the reader sculpts from the words in their own mind. A balance between what the author wants the reader to see and what they can lay out with words. All these things carry the weight of the writing and relying too heavily on one or not giving enough attention to another can throw off the poem or story. 

Once I get past the initial rush to lay out images or the plot, I love the fine tuning, the balancing of all the finer points of writing, playing with the language, weighting words by their placement, drawing out imagery. I try to keep the reader in my mind, what they need, how much I want to lead them and how much I want them to run off on their own with my words. But also giving precedence to what I want the poem to do and say. It's a delicate act of balance above the poem while stepping within it. 

Sometimes it works and sometimes I focus too much on what I want, the 'thing' I'm trying to make the poem do that I force it into shape and it shows in its reluctance. This is when I need mentors, writing group companions and other readers to step up and tell me something isn't working. I find it so helpful to have these dialogues because I am mired deeper within my own writing than another reader and often I cannot see where the problem is, even though I may have a sense of their being one.

So even though criticism can be hard to take, it ultimately can help you achieve that balance your writing needs. But it's never easy. 

In other news, three online magazines have featured my work recently The Stockholm Review of Literature which I just stumbled upon, ink, sweat and tears and The Honest Ulsterman. The latter two I've been trying to get into for a while, so was overjoyed when they found something they liked. I'm still wandering through the issues and there is a wide variety of authors and styles to choose from, so I hope you find something you enjoy. Thanks to the hard-working editors and their staff for offering such great opportunities to get writers' work out into the world and for accepting my poems. 

Just a reminder that GloPoWriMo - Global (or National if you're in the US) Poetry Writing Month starts April First and runs the entire month. One of the challenges is to write a poem a day which until this autumn I never thought I could (see links for my thoughts on this two years ago) so I'm going to step up to the challenge, but because I'm an idiot I've signed up for two online writing courses in April - one with Angela Carr and one with Wendy Pratt, both of whom I've mentioned here before as I've done several courses with them. 

Both courses have limited places and are filling up. There is no pressure with either tutor to write a poem a day or to share them on their private Facebook pages (visible only to the writers on the course and the tutor) but they are guaranteed to have a good positive atmosphere and the daily writing prompts are a good way of getting your writing brain working. They both have a small fee, check out the links. 

I have no preconceptions that I'll be writing two poems a day, but I figured between the two daily prompts I should come up with at least one good first draft daily. And anything I don't manage during the month, I can use to keep myself writing afterwards. I hope you think about joining one of the courses or get involved with other GloPoWriMo events, check out the website listed above for activities, prompts and local events. 

Ticking Boxes

I thought I posted this week, but I guess I didn't. Time getting away with me and I can't remember if I had an interesting subject to look at. 

My online course with Wendy Pratt finished and I've gone back to my list of verbs from Angela Carr's suggestions. I'm still writing a poem draft daily, I've written over 40 poems so far this year. 

I'm getting my second unpublished collection ready to send out. I've edited it once and need to look at layout again. That means spreading it out on the floor and moving things about, but I just can't summon up the enthusiasm just now. Struggling with things just now. I should be sending my first collection out to other publishers, getting this one ready to go out.

I've been researching poetry publishers and it's depressing. The smaller publishers want or are only able to support their local talent which I respect, so often aren't interested in international writers. The ones who are big enough are in such high demand they shut their intake of unsolicited  submissions. I can't publish locally as I can't find a Finnish poetry publisher that publishes English collections, again fair enough, but it leaves me in an unhappy position of once again not fitting the right boxes though I try and do what publishers require.

I can see why so many writers are turning to self-publishing, though I don't think I'm there yet. There's a plethora of writers who want to be published, but with e-books, Amazon and people preferring social media and television to reading there's not many publishers looking for authors and poetry is always a struggle to sell on both sides.

For now I'll keep plugging along and hope that some good news will be forth-coming.  

October - Back to Poetry

Wendy Pratt's online course started yesterday and there's been a flurry of writing and reading poetry about autumn. It fits right in with the weather and mood here. I'm already enjoying her daily prompts and am writing about autumny things we did at the weekend; walking in the woods, open fires, harvesting apples and pumpkins. 

The switch back to poetry has been welcomed. I've been working on my Finnish poetry collection. I have it whittled down to 74 pages currently and am reading it through and editing, rearranging, thinking about themes. See this previous post for more ideas of how to prepare a collection. It's early days yet, I'll see what I write for this course before I'm ready to say it's totally done. 

I'm still waiting to hear from the publisher who has my Scottish collection. I'd like to say I don't think about it, but I give it a small thought every night as I'm trying to fall asleep. I want to hear, but I also don't want to know if the news is negative. It's been almost six months which isn't unusual, but if difficult after the excitment of finishing the collection and sending it off. I could send it to more than one publisher and I probably will after a while, but I wanted to try this publisher first as it really felt like a good fit from my research. 

October 4th is National Poetry Day in the UK. Check out this link for local events and also check out local libraries, community centres and bookshops. 

Enjoy.

Backtracking - Rewriting Fiction

My second novel was written with no plan, no plot in mind. Just a setting, a character and a question. I let the character travel through her world to find an answer to the question. After the first draft was done, the question had been answered but it wasn't so important to the story anymore. Other questions, problems appeared, new characters became a focus as well.

My second draft has been trying to explore some of the ideas that developed later in my writing and to work in these new threads from the beginning. I've submitted my rewritten chapters to my writing group over the past year and we've reached Chapter Eight recently. Again, my readers asked new questions, showed interest in minor characters, struggled with aspects of the story. So I've been going back over the first seven chapters to makes sure it flowed and there weren't repeats or continuity errors or just problems.

I've also asked another writer to reread all seven chapters together. The problem with submitting 1,500 words at a time to the group that there is often long gaps between sections, as in the summer when I went on holiday, and not everyone can attend every weeks, so readers miss out on parts. Having a reader go over everything up to a certain point can give you good feedback on flow, pacing and development. 

I'm doing the same for another writer as he has also submitted about four chapters of his novel and we've both had the same sort of feedback about slow development. Our group mostly contains fantasy, science fiction genre pieces, so our two novels which are literary fiction, mostly relying on character development for their action rather than fighting or physical activities often feel slow. It's been helpful to get feedback on how things are working so far. 

And now that I have his comments I'm going over the chapters again. I'm also pushing forward with the next section for group this week. Until I get a firmer handle on the story, I'll continue to go back and rework as I move forward. It would have been easier to have a strong plot sorted before I started, but I can't always work that way. For me fiction develops from a grain of an idea and grows, expands as you learn more about the characters and the place you've set them in. It's one of my favourite things about the genre. I'm willing to take the time to move slowly back and forth over my story until I feel it's ready to face the world. 

Harvesting

The weather has definitely switched to autumn here, lots and lots of rain, temps cool enough to put on the heating, a desire to light a fire and wrap up in blankets. So it feels like time to start making plans and preparing. Harvest time.

Halloween is the end of the old year in the pagan calendar. I'm not a pagan, but I've always like this idea. My birthday is near Halloween so it's always been my new year point as well. For me autumn is a time to take stock, to prepare for the new year, to gather in resources and provisions for the winter. To finish old jobs and start new ones.

Life has given me a jolt and I've needed some time to curl up and reevaluate things from a distance. The same applies to my writing. The last week was quiet, but now I want to really begin to move forward.

I'm hoping the new course will give me lots of new poems to work with in October, but I also want to look at my Finnish poetry collection at terms of how I can start shaping it. I have enough poems as the moment for a full collection, but I need to reassess it in terms of theme and direction. See if I need to fill in any gaps or start from a new direction.

I'd like to read through the first 8 chapters of my second novel, the point where I've reached with my writing group, and see if it flows coherently. There's a worry from my writing group about pacing and development, so I need to look into that.

With my first novel, I need to brave looking at it again. I set it aside after rewriting the beginning as it needed time to set in my head. Now I need to read through it and see if it works and go forward with the rewriting if I'm happy with it.

So I'm taking small steps forward and it feels right for where I'm at just now. 

Catlapsed and Numbsweet

This is my last week before all the kids are home all the time from school and summer camps for seven weeks. I should be writing and writing and writing, but we all know it doesn't always work that way. There's still the house to maintain, dinner to sort, a phone call from one camp to check on a child's eye problem and tons of other things that pop up. The hours whisk by. 

I'm finishing my latest poem. I took it to my more laid-back summer edition of my writing group and got some good feedback, especially in terms of boat terminology which I know nothing about, but which help improve the feel of the poem immensely. I really have nothing new in mind to write though which feels odd.

So I've gone back to some old notebooks for inspiration and came across this list of compound words I made up for a writing practice. 

numbsweet     stankstone         

catlapse          saltshine

bootslap          bindsweet

rainheal           bloodnumb

rainclasp         smothershine

So much potential there. I used to play a lot more word games and wrote a lot more stream-of-conscious style practices. Something I should try to get back into. 

I've taken some notes from two unrelated writing exercises I did in 2005 about crabs. Why two exercises focussed on crabs? I don't know, but I'm wondering if I can do something with them. Maybe I'll try and use a word or two from the list above. 

I'm still editing both novels, but very little. I've received more rejections and submitted more poems to magazines. I'll need to set a new routine for me and the kids next week, so will take advantage as much as a I can of the extra time now. 

Common Writing Mistakes to Look Out For

While I'm editing and rewriting my second novel, I find it's worth looking for common mistakes that slow the writing down or just look amateurish. As I write first drafts without rereading and checking over things except for plot elements, these little mistakes sneak in easily. It's best not to do this while you're writing as you'll never move forward. 

I have a list of these from my teaching past, but I've picked up some new ones from the writing group I've been attending. Some of these you may not do often, some you may over do.

These are just a few that have popped into my head as I've been rewriting and workshopping lately, not an exhaustive list by any means. 

- 'to be' and boring verbs. 'He was old.' 'It had been a long day.' Give me more information, don't tell me about it, show me. Spice up your verb usage, break out the dictionary and look for synonyms. It's nice to mix it up, but don't be afraid to use 'to be'. As in all things, balance.

- overuse of adverbs. This also falls in the telling versus showing category. Don't tell me 'he ran quickly', show it through more details. 'His feet skimmed over the grass as he raced down the hill'.

- filter words. We talk a lot about getting more of the character's senses involved in the story. How does she feel, how does an item taste or smell or sound like. But you don't need to broadcast the fact that you're adding these descriptive details by telling is 'it tasted like', 'she felt'. Here's an article that lists lots of filter words which could be used less. The hard part is editing them out as it's not as easy as replacing a verb. Rather than say 'it smelled mouldy' say 'mould oozed from the cracks, filling the air with its rancid spores'. It makes your writing more immediate and interesting.

- using the phrase 'began to/begins to' or 'started to/starts to'. For example - 'she started to get up.' Why not just say 'She pulled herself up.' or be more specific and tell us how she did it.

- using the word 'just'. I discovered I use this word a lot. 'I just don't know what to do.' 'He was just picking up the car when . . .' Do you need to use it so often? Do a search and discover how many times you use it and if it seems like a lot, go through and see if they're necessary.

- repeating information - this can be through over-explaining an image or detail or it can be giving the same information in different scenes through different characters. If you've just showed your main character breaking up with her boyfriend, don't have her explain what happened to her best friend in the next scene. You can use indirect speech for this 'I told her I broke up with Joe' and then move on to new information.

- character descriptions - describing every character's hair and eye colour, what they're wearing in depth. This is not something I do, in fact I probably don't describe my characters enough, but I really dislike reading it in other's books. Pick a detail or two, preferably not hair and eye colour, and focus on that, something that gives us a feel for their personality rather than just how they look. 

- using 'there' too much - This is a new one for me and my next edit will involve looking at how I use 'there are' and 'there were'. Here's an interesting article about it. 

On to rewriting my first novel, I'm getting to the point where I feel the new section will soon meld with the old novel. I still have a lot of patching and smoothing to do and adding things later on to up the action. 

Best of luck with your writing or rewriting.

Moving Forward

I'm still rewriting my first novel. Thirty-six pages of mostly new material so far. I'm a slow writer, but I'm getting there. I don't really have a plan, just trying to get my character up to where the novel previously started and to have more action and suspense. I'm not sure how it's going as I'm not rereading yet, but I'm happy that I'm able to keep moving forward at this point.

Do you reread and edit as you're working on a first draft? I tend not to, unless I have an idea that needs incorporating earlier or I need to change something plot-wise. I like to keep pushing the characters into new situations without worrying too much about fixing the mistakes or tidying up the writing. This is especially important when I have no firm plot I'm working to. If I spend too much time going back and fixing things, I'll never move on to writing the new material. 

There's a buzz in following your character's first steps through a scene, meeting a new person for a first time. If you're worrying too much about tidying up your previous scene, you may miss an important detour the character wants to take or the details of this new adventure. I find it easier to go back and sort the language and add, take out or move information than it is to discover it the first time. 

I think it was Hemingway, but don't quote me on it, who said he liked to leave off writing knowing where the character was going next, so when he sat down to write the next day he could start off right away without figuring out that information. I try to do this as well. It doesn't always work because sometimes I just can't see how to get my character out of whatever situation she's stuck in and need some time away from the screen to ruminate on it. But if I can, I leave my character ready to head off on their next adventure. 

Actually, do quote me on it: The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable things I can tell you so try to remember it. - Ernest Hemingway from an article in Esquire, Oct 1953. More advice from the man here.

Today I finished off a scene that had been hanging over me for a week as I was uncertain of how to get her out of it. Now her next steps are planned, well, I know who she's going to be with and what they plan on doing. What actually happens is totally up to them on the day. 

I've also been working on the poem I started last week. It's basically done, I'm just tidying up the language which could take another week. First poem I've written in a while. 

The magazines have been very quiet lately. I know Finland starts to grind to a halt in June and totally goes dormant in July, but I didn't think the literary world would go so silent this early. I haven't had a rejection or acceptance or anything for over a month, I think. It's frustrating to sit here and wait to send out more work. I'm sure there are editors everywhere buried under reading piles, but let's hope they get some responses out soon. 

Rewriting After Rejection

I love to edit my work, I'm always tightening pieces and trying to bring out their best. In the rewriting stage especially, I take on reader's feedback and consider it when working on my novels or poetry. So it's not unexpected that after a big rejection like I had last week that I’ve been looking at my first novel with new eyes. 

Or maybe clearer eyes. I often know when a piece of writing isn't working, but finding a way to fix it is more difficult. I was partially aware that my first novel had some problems. It's not a mainstream novel and my unusual style is difficult for readers to become comfortable with: too poetic, too disjointed, the main character in too many pieces at the beginning to connect with. For years, I have been unable to find a way to approach this without losing how I saw the novel. 

I spent a lot of time last week pondering this. I did some simpler editing based around the problem of using a first-person narrative, too many I's, the sentence structure too similar, but the bigger issues continued to haunt me. How to make the beginning of the novel more approachable, but not lose my poetic sense of the novel?

I'm not sure if it's going to fix the problem, but I've decided to give it a go. I'm taking a person from the main character's past who is referred to in flashback scenes and bringing him forward and building a foundation from which the main character can fall into her disjointed state. I'll try to reduce the scenes from what is now the beginning, so that they are shorter and hopefully by embedding them in the foundation it will feel less of a jump for the reader. 

It will involve writing a substantial new chunk for the beginning and doing a lot of rewriting to make everything mesh. 

I'm not totally chucking my original. It might still find a home at one of the other publishers where it languishes in a slush pile. And I might hate the rewrite, so will want to go back to the original or start again from there. 

When the feedback is negative, it's not necessary to immediately jump to rewriting. Sometimes you have to valiantly cling onto your novel or poem with all your might until you find the right magazine or publisher. But if there's a niggling feeling that they might be right, it's worth exploring other options. Or if the same feedback comes back time and time again, you might need to admit it's a problem that needs to be fixed. 

Sit back and let the readers' comments and criticism sink in. Some questions to ask yourself. 

Is there a basis for their comments? Can they back it up with examples?

How will it improve the piece: help the readers' understanding, improve the saleability, etc?

How much does it change the original concept?

Is it a fix-it from the reader?

How dramatic and time-consuming is the change?

How do you feel about changing this?

I've mentioned 'fix-its' before when I was writing about criticism from writers' groups. It is when a reader suggests how you should 'fix' a problem your piece of writing. I am wary of these because the reader makes it personal, fixing the story to their needs. Sometimes the suggestion is good, but I prefer when the criticism is more about what they feel doesn't work, rather than how to fix it. I want to figure out my own way, do it in my style. Point out my story needs more suspense or hooks, don't suggest I should have my character get pregnant or have her mother abuse her. These are real life suggestions I've received for my current novel. Comments from readers can sometimes be very blunt. 

I've been sitting on this finished novel for ten years with the feeling that it wasn't quite right and that it wouldn't find a market as is. I'm at the stage where I'm happy to consider playing around with other ideas. 

In the end, it's your story or poem, you have to be proud to send it out, to see it with your name on it. 

Well, back to the rewriting. Best of luck. 

Rejection

Part of the waiting is over. One editor has come back to me with a negative response for my novel. Actually two this week, but I really wasn't expecting anything from the first.

I'm usually not bothered, I get lots of rejections. For my poems, my novel, but I allowed myself to hope a bit with this one. I researched the company and really liked the sound of their editing procedure. The editor was really nice and personable in her emails and requested to see the first 50 pages, then the whole thing very quickly. It seemed all positive.

The rejection, though half-expected because I'm not 100% sure of my fiction, hit me hard at first. I was literally numb for a few minutes looking at the email.

Her comments were brief, but to the point. One problem she mentioned can be fixed with some work. A few of the others I've known in the back of my mind since completing the novel, but I'm not sure how to rework it, rewrite it to fix them. Some surprised me. I can't tell how far she really read, it seems like maybe only the first 50 pages from her email. Maybe it improves after that point. It might be a matter of rejigging things to move some of the scenes around, but it might require a whole rewrite. It could mean changing my idea behind the novel.

It might be the fatal flaw and need changing, I can't decide right now. And I won't. For now, I'm fixing the fixable and scribbling notes of what I could do to approach the other bigger problems.

Rejection this big is heart-breaking, but it doesn't signal the end. There might be an editor who can see what I see, it's still at a few other places. I might find a way to rework it without losing my original vision. I have scrapped 30,000 words of this novel and started from scratch before. It didn't stop me from writing then, it won't now.

I will give myself time to recover, I will continue on with this novel and with my second. With my poetry. With writing.