Writing Process Blog Tour

I was having tea and cake with Carole Burns in Pettigrew Tea Rooms, one of my favourite places for Cardiff editorial meetings that aren't in the pub, when she mentioned that she was taking part in the Writing Process Blog Tour and she wondered if I might like to too. As Carole explains in her blog: 'The Writing Process Blog Tour is a kind of whistle-stop tour of writers exploring their writing process -- they answer four questions about their work, then send you on to the next writer. Today, I'm one of the stops.' 
The next stop was Ivy Alvarez, whose brutal, brilliant second poetry collection, Disturbance (Seren, 2013) is really worth a read. A recipient of writing fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Hawthornden Castle and Fundacion Valparaiso, her work is published in journals and anthologies in many countries and online, with selected poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.
Carole Burns, whose short story collection The Missing Woman will come out with Parthian next year, is also Head of Creative Writing at Southampton University, a co-organiser of the XX Women's Writing Festival, author of Off The Page and a regular author interviewer for The Washington Post. She had asked at our meeting, as many people tend to do, how my own writing was coming along. I made the little half laugh that I usually make in reply. So she suggested that it might be good for me to answer the four questions and think about my own writing for a change. 
Here you go...
What am I working on?
Several projects. My first (as yet unnamed) poetry collection, my second short story collection (No Laughter After Midnight) and my first novel (The Blackhole Resort) being three of them. At the moment, for gigs and other deadlines, I am focusing on the poems and stories. Much to my potential agents / publishers disappointment. But come June I plan to dust the novel off once again and get back to it. I've been chipping away at it since the first book was signed off. I don't think it is the next The Goldfinch but it might take me as long to polish off, so I understand the eye rolling of my authors when I tell them to hurry up with their novels / edits. The key for me is consecutive time to focus. Which I now have again.
Saying that, I'm a bit of an ideas girl. So typically I've also got a plan for a creative non-fiction book that I've been researching on and off for a while. It may or may not include some of my own life writing. There's a book of essays, a play and a sitcom also waiting in the sidelines. Probably for a long time. When I did my MA it turned out that I'm also pretty good at screenwriting, but I didn't watch a lot of TV back then. I didn't even have a TV. Almost three years with my partner has changed that. The BBC should probably invite me in.
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
There is less of it? Generally my work gets described as dark and quirky, with oddball lonely characters that I am too mean to. Not a lot has changed there. My poetry is a little less self-obsessed. It has fewer pints and far fewer men... and more plants and random illnesses in it, much like my life. My prose has more dialogue and adventure. I still like alliteration. The best ideas still turn up like long lost friends when I'm feverish or hungover or just dropping off to sleep. I dream ideas more than I used to also.
Why do I write what I do?
Compulsion. Ego. Self-imposed deadlines and gigs. Because I am fascinated by people and relationships and how we can continue to mess everything up but still have okay lives and redeem ourselves. But also because we can't. Because I have written stories since I've been able to type on my first typewriter. Because the world often confuses me and this is a way to examine it. Because I love science and maths and originally was going to become a psychologist. Because I like our quirks and oddness. Because I like us. Because I'm often better at fixing my character's lives than my own (although I generally choose not to because that makes me feel better). Because I have a cruel streak. But also such a huge capacity for guilt. So it is better I am cruel to the fictional people. Because I've got insomnia or I had more wine / coffee / sugar than I should have. Because there is nothing that excites me as much as good literature.  Although good sex / art / music / food / weather / fireworks / thunderstorms all come close.
How does my writing process work?
I'm pleased to say I've carved a writing day back in to my busy working week. 
Having a job that involves reading every day is helpful too, although I have to remind myself to make time to read other writers that I adore, and more I've yet to discover. I wish I didn't need to sleep. I wish I could pause time and read all the books I want to read and then start life up again. I'd be a much better writer for it, and I could still have an active social life.
I am always writing. I write in my head. Snatches and scraps of writing, and those mulling big ideas. I can't not. I keep (lots of) notebooks and feel a gigantic sense of panic if I don't have a notebook and pen in my bag. Usually I need three notebooks and eight pens. I've managed to make these notebooks smaller though as my friends despaired at how many bags I carried on me everyday. The Kindle also helped with that.
I will dissect these notebooks for the gems of ideas, and the bits that go together, then type them up, print them out and stick them in pocketed project folders. I like to research topics or images to use as a jump off point. Then I'll grab one of these prompts and write for the day. Starting is easy. Finishing is... 
For the stories I am writing around the ideas of shared space, loss and phobias. A version of the title story was published last year in The Lampeter Review about a woman plagued by noises that she tries to collect in jam jars. They are all about women at the moment, but some may gender swap, and there are some male stories still to be written. There's a woman scared of the weather and another haunted by the ghost of her husband as she travels to turn off his life-support machine. I tend to write a story either all in one go - not moving from my desk for 12 hours - or I'll write in 500-1000 word stints. Then I usually edit them a lot, but I also have a habit of sending them out too soon or not at all. I'm trying to break that.
The poems are more varied. Some are to do with gravel, computer games, bananas, Batman, gluten intolerance, vertigo, balloons, body parts, Cheltenham Race Week, hair, forests, journeys and silliness. I write them when out walking, on journeys or in the shower. Like Ivy, I tried to write one a day, and I failed... but, now that I've stopped teaching once a week, I'm also catching up with the wonderful 52 project - writing a poem a week, with prompts and examples and a forum to share and comment on work each week - and I'm forming a super group with talented friends for regularly workshopping poems, which I'd been meaning to do for ages. That should scare me into upping my game again, I hope.
& the novel, perhaps I'll talk more about that when it is done. 

Up next, two Parthian authors:
Kit Habianic is a London-based writer, originally from Wales. Her debut novel Until Our Blood is Dry is published by Parthian Books and currently serialised in the Western Mail. The novel tells the story of the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985 and of two South Wales coalfield families whose lives are torn apart by the dispute. Kit has published several short stories in literary magazines and anthologies.
Susmita Bhattacharya was born in Mumbai, India. She sailed around the world in an oil tanker for three years with her husband, recording her voyages through painting and writing journals. She received an M.A. in Creative Writing from Cardiff University in 2006 and has had several short stories and poems published since. She lives in Plymouth with her husband, two daughters and the neighbour’s cat.  Her debut novel, The Normal State of Mind, will be published by Parthian Books in 2014.






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Published on April 21, 2014 10:00
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Susie Wild
This blog combines all my posts for the Bright Young Things website, Mslexia, Buzz, The Raconteur, The Stage, Artrocker and any other online content.

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