Whatever happened to the Strictly Writing Award Winner? Carys Bray returns to tell us all!

I wanted to be a writer when I was a little girl, but I married young, had several children in quick succession and the dream got buried somewhere - probably under a big pile of dirty nappies. I started writing again as soon as my children were at school. I did a writing module during my Literature degree with the Open University and then I decided to do a Creative Writing MA.

I entered one of my early MA stories in the Strictly Writing Award competition and I was tremendously excited when I won. I was just beginning to think that perhaps, one day, when I’d had a lot more practice, I might actually be able to call myself a writer.  

I kept writing stories after I’d finished my MA and I soon had enough to make a collection. I heard about Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize, the only international prize for debut collections of short stories written in English, and I decided to enter. I was delighted to be shortlisted and over the moon to win.

My collection, Sweet Home, is full of stories about family and the things that go right, and wrong, when people live together. Some of the stories are sad, some are funny and some are best described as fairy tales. 

Lancashire Writing Hub guest editor Sarah Schofield reviewed Carys Bray’s Salt Scott Prize winning short story collection Sweet Home here: she says "...The collection is titled after the third story in the book. This decision is well measured. ‘Sweet Home’ is an updated twist on Hansel and Gretel. Playing on the original narrative, it highlights discrimination, racism and small community gossip. Refering to the foreign woman’s gingerbread home, one zenophobic character states: “She should have used an English recipe… Victoria sponge… You can’t get more English than that.” It seems more than appropriate that the Hansel and Gretel narrative, so ingrained in family life and read to generations of children, should have a re-evaluation and hold an important place in this collection. Challenging established expectations of what ‘family’ looks like...."

I get inspiration from everyday things. A couple of the stories are set in shops; one in a surreal store where people can buy children, and another in a midnight supermarket during the rescue of a group of Chilean miners. I read a lot of parenting books when my children were small and, over time, I developed a hatred of them. The opening story in the collection deals with that hatred - it is interrupted by ‘helpful’ quotes from fictional parenting books. I really like fairy tales and I think they have fuelled my love for short stories where impossible things happen. In one of my stories an old lady builds a gingerbread house and in another a carpenter sculpts a baby out of ice.

I like to read stories that are funny and sad, probably because real life is often both of those things. I like beautiful language and I also like to be surprised. Some stories I have really enjoyed recently are ‘Sports Leader’ from Jane Rogers’ new collection Hitting Trees With Sticks, ‘Sometimes Gulls Kill Other Gulls’ from A.J. Ashworth’s debut collection Somewhere Else, Or Even Here and ‘Tamagotchi’ from Adam Marek’s new collection The Stone Thrower.

I’m still writing short stories, although at the moment I’m mostly concentrating on a PhD and novel. I’m nearly at the end of my first draft of the novel. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s about the sudden death of a small child and it’s full of fairy tales and misplaced faith in the miraculous. It’s sad, but I hope it’s funny too, just like real life. 

To find out more about Carys, you can find her blog here:  http://carysbray.co.uk

To win a signed copy of 'Sweet Home', simply tell us which traditional fairy story YOU'D like to give a modern twist and why.  Leave your idea in our comments box  and we'll announce the winner next week on Strictly Writing.

Many thanks to Carys for coming back and telling us all about her rise to publication fame - we're so proud that we were able to play such a meaningful role in her success story.

Guest Blog by Vanessa Gebbie - The Art of the Short Story

It’s a slippery thing, fiction! So I looked up a few definitions.

Story: a fictional narrative of briefer length than a novella. Then I looked up ‘Novella’ and discovered that the original ‘novels’ were probably the verbal relating of news from one town to another. The news was told to entertain as well as inform. The sequence of events changed. Some was held back, making the listeners desperate to know more…and so was born the ‘art’ of the story.

Art: the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.

The short story is one of the most powerful forms of fiction. An arrangement of fictioncraft elements to elicit a response from the reader. ( Something that varies from mere enjoyment through to a real emotional punch in the gut). It is also one of the slipperiest forms of fiction –on one level it is easy to write (anyone can scribble a story in a few minutes – a sequence of events; a beginning, middle and end). But it is one of the most difficult to do well –that is the challenge for those of us who adore the form.

Maybe we love it for its power. The strength embodied in so few words, the way it can elicit a depth of emotional response that cannot be sustained (and rightly, or the reader would collapse!) for a whole novel. The way it can literally be life-changing.

Life changing? What IS this woman talking about?

I am not talking everyday page-fillers here, although they have their place. Instead, read ‘A Small Good Thing’ by Raymond Carver. Or ‘The Ledge’ by Lawrence Sargant Hall. Or ‘The Shawl’ by Cynthia Ozick. If you don’t feel changed, a little, you have not been reading properly. (All in Best American Shorts of the Century, ed: Updike)

Behind those stories is the craft of writing short fiction, applied by the masters.

I wanted a text book that would show me what was possible. Written not by a single writer but by many. By prize-winning writers who are also superb teachers. I wanted a book that did not treat me like an idiot. But neither would it treat fiction as though it was the province of academia, of the intelligent and cloistered few. It had to be fun, encouraging me to explore my own creativity whilst being solid on craft. It would not pretend that writing is a mystical happening. And it would, once I had started my journey, continue to feed me, to give me ideas, and most of all remind me that I am in the company of others.

That book now exists. It’s called Short Circuit. It has been out exactly a month today, and is already on the recommended reading lists of many writing courses. It is recommended by those behind the Bridport, Fish, Asham and Frank O Connor awards, by teachers of writing and by writers. It works.

Vanessa Gebbie’s short fiction has won many awards, including prizes at Bridport, Fish (twice), Per Contra (USA), the Daily Telegraph and the Willesden Herald, from final judges such as Zadie Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Michael Collins and Colum McCann. She is a freelance writing teacher working with adult groups at literary festivals as well as school students. In 2010 she will be teaching undergraduates at Stockholm University.
Many of her prize-winning stories are brought together for the first time in Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt, 2008). A second collection, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, is forthcoming.

Vanessa asks you to support independent publishers. The book can be bought direct from Salt with a 20% discount. (Also available from Amazon and the usual suspects.)
http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/sgrw/9781844717248.htm/

Do visit her website www.vanessagebbie.com or blog www.vanessagebbiesnews.blogspot.com and also http://www.theartoftheshortstory.com/

Nothing Beats Time - Guest Blog by Tania Hershman

Heard the one about leaving something new aside, so you can come back to it with fresh eyes? Sounds sensible. Do I do it? Of course not. But I've learned my lesson.

A little background: the shock of Salt offering to publish my story collection was so great that for two years I hadn't written anything longer than 500 words. I wrote 100 flash stories, which isn't terrible since quite a few were published. But the book came out a year ago and, after being focussed on selling, selling, selling, I missed working on something longer. I write flash stories in one sitting, the process is as “flash” as the product.

Finally, I wrote a 1000-word story. I was excited to have something “long” (yes, you may snicker). I was so in love with the voice and the language, I thought it was great. I gave it to my writing group for critique, they spotted places where more information was needed but didn't give any “big picture” comments. So I thought, wow, that was quick: a finished story, and swiftly dispatched it to several competitions.

Then I wrote another “long” story, a whopping 1400 words, and it felt different. It upset me to write it, and the group were extremely enthusiastic. I knew this one expressed something that had been inside me for a long time. The voice in my head said, “That other one needs work.” I ignored it. I'd sent it out, hadn't I? It was done.

Well, the first story got nowhere in two competitions. The voice said, “Told you. It's missing something.” But I didn't know what. Suddenly I saw that I'd tied the ending in neatly with the beginning, but, actually, there was no middle. And I began to realise that I had set it up to be a certain kind of story and just hadn't delivered. This is something I learned from Robert McKee's excellent guide to screenplay writing, Story. He says: Take Jaws. The setup promises that the shark and the policeman will meet. If they didn't the viewer would feel cheated. He says: Know what kind of story you are telling. If you set something up as a comedy and then it becomes a bloody crime thriller, the viewer will feel disappointed.

I'd set up my story, without knowing it, as a ghost story. But then I hadn't followed through. I'd missed the part with the ghost! I couldn't see this when I wrote it. I thought it was about families. I could only coo over it, rather than stand back and say, Hang on, wait...?

So, I deleted 500 words. I killed my baby. Then I breathed a sigh of relief because I could see clearly that half way through is where I'd let go, where I'd cheated. This week, I started writing again from the half-way point, and it went in an entirely different direction. It's now 1200 words, and not finished. Who knows where it will end up?

I'm embarassed I sent it out, not to mention annoyed about the competition fees. It won't get anywhere. It shouldn't get anywhere. It's not my writing group's fault. It's my fault for being too hasty. Time, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing beats it. Leave it in that proverbial drawer, if only for a few weeks or months, and you – and your bank account - will be very glad you did.

Tania Hershman (www.taniahershman.com) is a former science journalist now living in Bristol after spending 15 years in Jerusalem, Israel. Commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers, her short story collection, The White Road and Other Stories (www.thewhiteroadandotherstories.com), is published by Salt. Her short stories have been published in print and online and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Tania is Grand Prize winner of the Binnacle's 2009 Ultra Short Competition and European regional winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's short story competition. She is the founder and editor of The Short Review, (www.theshortreview.com), a site dedicated to reviewing short story collections. Tania blogs at TaniaWrites (www.titaniawrites.blogspot.com).

Salt Publishing would like to offer Strictly Writing readers a special 30% discount off Tania's book. If interested, go to this page: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smf/9781844714759.htm. Then just enter in the discount code GM18py7n.