A Covid glitch and 'Tides' at WORDTheatre

I've been away from this blog for some time, at first because I was very involved in trying to get a new novel started - it's often for me the biggest part of writing a novel, finding the right structure and voice so the whole thing can take off: it takes up all my consciousness so that I can think of very little else, including getting the usual practical things of life done. Then I went down with Covid, and was pretty rough and have since been suffering exhaustion. During this time the novel pretty much slipped from my mental grasp, and I may be back to square one with it when I tackle it again.

Still, I'm getting some energy back now, which is just as well, as a couple of weeks ago I travelled to London to an exciting WORDTheatre event at the Crazy Coqs cabaret venue in London's Piccadilly, where my story 'Tides, Or How Stories Do or Don't Get Told' was read by the brilliant actor Nina Sosanya. 

WORDTheatre was founded by the amazingly energetic producer Cedering Fox. The mission is to promote short stories by having them read by renowned actors at live events which are filmed for later screenings, with readings recorded for free podcasts. The event I attended was devoted to Salt's yearly Best British Short Stories, edited by Nicholas Royle, who was there to talk about the series. Five stories had been chosen by Cedering from out of the ten anthologies published so far. Alongside my story, which appeared in BBSS 2014, there were stories by Hilary Mantel, David Constantine, Hanif Kureishi and Courttia Newland, read by Nina, David Morrisey, Gina Bellman, Indira Varma, Derek Riddel and Rhashan Stone.

It was a really lovely evening in the very stylish Art Deco setting of Crazy Coqs, with musical interludes on the piano and violin. Nina read my story brilliantly, bringing out all the multiple meanings I had intended, with all of the emphases I'd had in my head as I wrote it, and I felt very moved. 

Find out about WORDTheatre and membership here.

'Tides, Or How Stories Do or Don't Get Told' is included in Best British Short Stories 2014 and my own collection, Used to Be, both published by Salt.

Dramatic and quiet stories. 'Kiss' chosen for Best British Short Stories 2019

Happy New Year!

I have started the new year on a bit of a high, as my story 'Kiss' which early last year was longlisted in the Short Fiction Journal prize and was recently published on MIR online, has been chosen by editor Nicholas Royle for inclusion in Best British Short Stories 2019, to be published by Salt later this year. This is the second time I've had a story in this great series - in 2014 my story 'Tides, Or How Stories Do or Don't Get Told', made it (interestingly, that had also been previously published online) - and it's a huge thrill to have a published story receive this further - and prestigious - acknowledgement. ('Kiss' is the story I wrote about in my post on research for fiction.)

I've had three strikes with this story, basically, and pretty quickly (it did get two blanks, with two other competitions), but as far as I can remember 'Tides' suffered a few rejections before being accepted for publication and finally receiving critical praise in reviews of Best British Short Stories. It's made me ponder the mystery of why some stories make it easily and quickly, and others take some time to get acceptance even though they may do well in the end. Perhaps to some extent it's subject matter: as a story concerning terrorism, 'Kiss' involves an urgent current topic and a dramatic situation. There's also the question of the form of a story: the urgency of the situation in 'Kiss' is reflected in a deliberately rushed, breathless prose. 'Tides', on the other hand, is consciously contemplative both in subject matter and style - I guess you could say it was a 'quiet' story. And 'Kiss' involves sexuality, including a new and youthful relationship, whereas 'Tides' concentrates on the quieter poignancy of a long-term relationship. Yet to me these two stories are equally dynamic in terms of their themes and the issues they raise. (I'm afraid 'Tides' is no longer online, but it can be read in my latest story collection, Used to Be [Salt].)

It makes me wonder: are 'quieter' stories less likely to catch the eye of competition judges and magazine editors overwhelmed with material and inevitably to some extent scanning on first sight? Is there such a thing as a 'competition story', as I have long suspected? It would be a great pity if quieter, more contemplative, but no less accomplished and thematically important stories were to be squeezed from our culture...

Two story reviews I hadn't seen before

Yesterday I came across two reviews I hadn't seen before of anthologies containing my stories, both by Katie Lumsden, on her great blog, Books and Things.

The first is a review of Best British Short Stories 2014, ed Nicholas Royle, and I'm chuffed to say that she really liked my story, 'Tides' :

I love Elizabeth Baines’s ‘Tides, or How Stories Do or Don’t Get Told’. In part I love it because I like self-reflective writing, because it’s clever, because it’s in part about writing, about telling stories. But it’s also just a beautiful, moving story, a story about the lack of story almost. It’s brilliant.

One of her favourite stories in the book is David Constantine's 'Ashton and Elaine', which led her on to Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontes, ed A J Ashworth, where that story was first published, and which she reviewed here. I'm happy to say that she also liked my story in Red Room, 'That Turbulent Stillness', of which she says:

One of my favourite stories was ‘That Turbulent Stillness’. I’ve already come across Elizabeth Baines inThe Best British Short Stories 2014, and it was a real pleasure to read another of her short stories. ‘That Turbulent Stillness’ is movingly written, with strong characterisation. It has a lovely narrative voice in which the narrator intrudes, at first in a very Victorian manner (‘I know very well what happened’, etc), and later in a more self-conscious, almost post-modern way that I enjoy. I plan to buy and read Elizabeth Baines’s novel promptly and expect good things from it.

Both stories are included in my newly-published collection, Used to Be, a box of which arrived yesterday, to my great excitement.

A time-lapse year

Happy New Year to all!

It's been a funny time-lapse sort of year for me, writing-wise. All last winter I holed in and worked intensively on something long and then got stalled on it for various reasons not to do with writing, so there's nothing to show for it yet and may not be for a while. In the meantime, however, although as far as the actual writing went my focus was away from short stories, stories I'd written previously were published in several anthologies. In January I was in York at a signing for Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontes, ed. A J Ashworth (Unthank Books), for which my story 'That Turbulent Stillness' was commissioned - an amusing day I wrote about here. Spring and summer brought three more anthologies. Best British Short Stories 2014, ed. Nicholas Royle (Salt) was launched in June at the first-ever London Short Story Festival and included my story 'Tides, Or How Stories Do or Don't Get Told', first published online by Fiction Editor Kate Brown at The View From Here. This was followed the very next week by Unthology 5, ed. Ashley Stokes & Robin Jones (Unthank), where my story 'Clarrie and You' appeared, which involved me in a truly enjoyable first-time trip to Norwich for the launch. In July I attended the 13th Conference on the Short Story in English in Vienna, and my story 'Where the Starlings Fly' was one in an anthology of stories by writers invited to read at the conference, Unbraiding the Short Story, ed. Maurice A Lee. Finally, in the autumn, my inverted ghost story 'A Matter of Light' saw publication in an anthology of creepy stories from Honno, The Wish Dog, ed. Penny Thomas and Stephanie Tillotson. In fact, I ended up with a clash: I was really sorry to have to miss the Cardiff launch of this book as I was already committed to read at an event at Edge Hill University for Best British Short Stories 2014, organised by fellow contributor and lecturer Ailsa Cox. Meanwhile, during the summer, my story 'Looking for the Castle' was runner-up in the Short Fiction competition, and in the week before Christmas I heard that it is to be published in Unthology 7 by Unthank Books in the coming summer.

After my winter of seclusion, I became suddenly a writer once more in touch with the wider literary world. A long time ago now I gave up teaching writing to concentrate more on my own work. I was lucky to be able financially to do that, I know, but the fact is that I was becoming decidedly itchy for the creative and intellectual stimulation I always found in teaching. So when in March I was invited to read at the Vienna conference, I jumped at the chance, and have to say that I revelled in the conference, in the to-and-fro with academics and other writers. An upshot was that I was invited to join a narrative research group, and I have to say that although peace and isolation are essential ingredients in the life of the writer, there's little more stimulating than sharing ideas about writing with your peers and to be able to feel a sense of your own place as a writer within the wider world of literary ideas. By the same token, I accepted a generous invitation to join the writers' group to which three of my writing colleagues already belonged, and I'm once again experiencing that mutual support between writers who trust and respect each other - there's really nothing like it.

I'm entering 2015 with a lot lined up writing-wise: two longer pieces to redraft and, before Easter, a commission to write a short story and linked essay, but I'm thrilled to be able to say I'm doing it all with a sense of backup, and with a greater sense of context in which to do it.

I wish you all similar happiness in your projects for the coming year.

Reading time

After weeks of short-story events that have taken me to London, Norwich and Vienna I'm finally having time to relax and do some proper reading. I can't believe that it was actually May when Faber sent me All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. I have only just got around to reading it and posting my thoughts (here on Fictionbitch). I absolutely loved it, and it's an object lesson in how to write about the most painful things (in this case the suicides of a father and sister), with warmth and generosity as well as biting humour. Go to the link and find out how I thought it was done, and why it's currently one of my best novels of all time.

I've also been reading the other stories in Best British Short Stories 2014 (Salt) (which includes my story 'Tides'), and I thoroughly recommend it. Grab it here. I've even managed to read the reading-group book well in time for our next meeting, rather than up against the wire as usual. (It's Doris Lessing's first novel The Grass is Singing.) (My report of our last discussion, Ironweed by William Kennedy, which I also finally got around to writing, is here).