The Creative Identity

Stephanella Meets Valerie O'Riordan

Valerie was one of my first followers on Twitter and one that I felt qualified to hook up with immediately by virtue of her proximity to me. She too operates from Manchester and she too has taken a left turn at some point in the recent past, when she enrolled from an MA in creative writing after having worked at the BBC. Well, imagine my immense delight a few weeks ago when I saw Valerie's tweet from the Bristol Prize award ceremony, when she said, 'And I just went and won the thing!'. I guess that, like most writers, I felt that the success of one of us is the success of all of us. Just look at how delightfully startled she looks! Priceless! The Bristol Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes in the short story arena (yeah but... watch how BIG The Creative Identity Short Story Competition is going to get!) and one that has rapidly grown over the past three years. Valerie has bagged the prize with a very short short story (it's only 350 words long!) which is featured in the anthology with the other nineteen that soared above all other entries. I am currently planning a podcast with Valerie for The Creative Identity eCourse and I must admit to be looking forward to it enormously. I have read the winning short story and I really would love to know how a writer can take up someone else's identity so beautifully and, seemingly, easily as... Read more →

Rejected? Just Shut Up!

Years ago, when I was seeking an agent for one of my projects, I came across many of them willing to talk to me but ultimately I gained no representation. I subsequently canned the project and got a deal for another one. At the time, however, I remember discussing this with a couple of close friends who all suggested I went back to the agent(s) and asked why on earth after such a promising start (calling me, no less) they had decided not to represent my work. I was emotionally on the edge at the time dear reader; as all writers know, the whole agent/publishing deal thing is one that feels immensely personal to the writer, while in reality, and if only we let objectivity seep through sometimes, it is nothing other than a business deal. Those conversations with people urging me to find out why a promising beginning had yielded rejection did not sit well with me. Yes, I was rejected and dejected. Yes, I wanted to know why a proposal that had been deemed fantastic had not yielded what I perceived as the ultimate reward, representation. Yet, what I learnt later was what I say all the time in my workshops now: if your writing is good, you will succeed, provided you have the right project in your hands. In non-fiction, it's marketability that sells far and above your ability to write the book itself (think footballers' autobiographies). I was less experienced at the time but at the... Read more →

Try This

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet. –Truman Capote– Last week I suggested that you should take yourself to a café, listen to how people really talk and then write a dialogue like that. If you have done this exercise though, you will have noted that while the real conversation flows quite naturally despite all its faults, writing one like that does not qualify as good dialogue. A few months ago I was transcribing an interview with a best-selling author. You wouldn't believe how fragmented and, yes, even rambling, this read once on the page. Yet, it sounded entirely normal on tape. After my transcription (all twenty-five pages), I wrote another version of it, mostly clearing it of pauses, interruptions and broken sentences. It then read as a really great dialogue, but with none of the dross that just does not work on paper. Take the page you wrote last week trying to imitate the way in which people really talk and turn it into a dialogue fit for a novel. Read more →

I'm A Book Fairy

Do you know what this is, apart from the obvious? It is the fulfillment of my duty as one of Christine Mason Miller's Book Fairies. In that brown envelope there is Christine's Ordinary Sparkling Moments, a book about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. It took me ages to summon the guts to drop a line to Christine and offer my services as one of the one hundred Book Fairies who have scattered these surprises across the globe. And yes, I really do mean across the globe! These books have been east and west and north and south and in just about every single continent there is. Look here. I cannot wait to see my drop-off mentioned at Christine's digs, but while we wait, I can tell you a bit more about it myself. I went to Tatton Park (near Knutsford, near Manchester, north west of England) on Sun 25 July. This isn't unusual for me, as it is my favourite local park and that's where I am on most Sunday mornings with my two dogs William and Victoria. Calling it a 'park' is a bit insubstantial really, as it stretches over 2,000 acres, with meres, woodland, farmland, lakes and little rivers and is the home of deer, sheep, swans, herons, cows, pigs, an Italianate Mansion, manicured gardens (including a Japanese one) and so on and so forth. Even before I asked Christine to be appointed as a Book Fairy I thought that Tatton was going to be my drop-off... Read more →

Bauman Rare Books

When in NYC The Waldorf Astoria is my home. My real home, however, isn't a tenth as splendid as The Waldorf; the mere idea that the surrogate version of my two-bedroomed little house with a cracked drive and an overgrown, straggly garden lives on the other side of the Atlantic as a magnificent art-déco building with a legendary two-ton clock ticking away in the lobby and The Guerlain Spa a mere swoosh up the lifts is the stuff of an ironic, tragic trick of destiny. Why am I not the Steph from that parallel dimension, the one who lives at The Waldorf all the time and not just two weeks a year? Say, an intelligent version of Paris Hilton? Still, I know exactly what happened and when for me to think of The Waldorf as my mothership. It was my first time there, in 2002, and I was taking my first spin around the shops (sorry, boutiques) scattered around the lobby. Amidst antiques and Fabergé eggs and costume jewelery and a WHSmith that sold silver and golf clubs and cashmere jumpers (obviously, a fluke WHSmith if you know the ones that infest the UK), one window stood out above all of them. With leather-bound books all around and an antique desk resplendent under the spotlights, I went through an out of body experience as my mouth started watering at sight of the chocolate-like spines ornated by gilded writing. This was my first time encounter with Bauman Rare Books. When I... Read more →