Fifty words on me: It’s a love/hate relationship this writing thing. When you’re doing it, it’s a killer, all angst and sweat and toil. When you’re not doing it, it’s also a killer, words racing round and round in your head, ideas jumping at you, structures presenting themselves. I know that once you’ve got it, it’s like something’s got you by the throat, you just can’t get rid of it. Even when you fall out with it and say you’re never going to do it again it just creeps up on you and you’re doing it in your head without even realising it. I look at somebody and I’m writing their story in my head. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s real or if I’ve made it up!

My first sale was…
An article to Woman’s Own, for ever ago.

My family think my writing is…
Brilliant, especially my 13 year-old grandson, Jack, who wants to follow in my footsteps and is at the moment on Chapter 9 of his latest novel – I understand this is page 22! He says he wants to be the next Irene Yates but I’ve told he needs to be the first Jack Archer.
My husband wishes I’d hurry up and make it big so that he could retire. Huh.

The best/worst thing about writing short stories for magazines is…
Best is sales, worst is rejections! Very worst is finding something in a mag just like something you’ve just sent off so you just know yours will be rejected.

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At lunch with my friends Alan and Chris, I was introduced to wabi-sabi.
Rows of exquisite rolls of raw fish sushi-ing enticingly by on a conveyor belt? No. Wabi-sabi isn't sushi. It's the Japanese art of imperfection and impermanence.
The art of imperfection?? I've spent most of my life struggling against it. Haven't you? The concept of wabi-sabi provides much food for thought, and it doesn't come in little parcels. I began to think about wabi-sabi and writing.
I thought of what author Emma Darwin calls 'Ugly Duckling syndrome'. UDS is what strikes after you've completed your first (or second, or third) novel. You've learned a lot. You begin the next novel full of hope and enthusiasm. And then you suddenly find yourself wracked with self-consciousness. Stalled. You know what needs to be done but you feel utterly incapable of doing it. Every phrase you write is ugly, awkward. Every sentence is imperfect. Your Inner Editor sits on your shoulder, swiping you around the ear each time you begin to write.
Adjectives? Adverbs? Pah! the imperturbable Inner Editor spits, whacking a ruler painfully over your knuckles.
Cliche-ridden... The Inner Editor grins from ear to ear. Sure as eggs are eggs, you won't get that one past her.
Present Tense? The Inner Editor picks up her mobile and dials 999 to summon the men in white coats.
Don't Tell - Show!


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It's official, I've 'arrived' in my new home city. The editor of the Bristol Review of Books, on seeing this sample of my writing, called it a 'fabulous piece' and asked permission to publish it in his magazine which is distributed in its thousands to bookshops, museums, libraries and coffee shops in Bristol and beyond. I was fortunate enough to get the centre-spread in the magazine, plus a mention in the Editor's column and on the front cover. I'm truly pleased the story is getting more exposure and reaching a wider audience.

"Sarah Hilary throws light on forgotten barbarity at the end of World War II. Sarah weighs the human cost of propoganda in wartime and offers hope that human spirit, and morality, can overcome tyranny." Stephen Morris, Editor


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Ever fancied a good hiss and a spit about something writing-wise, that's close to your heart? Some of you may remember our last Guest Blog Competition at Easter - the winner was Gary Wilson and he wrote a very inspiring post about, erm, Inspiration! So, why not put yourselves forward and send us a sentence or two explaining what you would blog about. Have a good rant or a gentile discussion, list a top ten of how to deal with writer's block or rejection... Whatever you like, as long as it is tempered with good humour and strictly about writing. Or reading. Or getting published - you get the picture. We have a cap of 500 words and would link the piece to any website of your choice, as well as uploading a photo. Simply email your idea to Samantha (click on 'email' in her profile).

The winner will have their guest piece posted up in November and win a signed copy of our very own Helen Black's 'Damaged Goods'.



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Have you ever actually thought about the order in which you put the words - and sense - in a sentence? In In Praise of the Long Sentence I was thinking about how long sentences flow forwards - provide profluence, aka narrative micro-drive - in a way which short sentences can't. But there's also a flexibility about the structure of a long sentence which means you can control the order in which the reader experiences its elements. Narrative takes place in time even more unavoidably than music does, since we don't even have the equivalent of chords, so it's as well to learn to make the most of it. I'm no philologist, but I suspect that English, being virtually uninflected and depending for much of its grammar on auxiliary elements, rather than endings to words, has great advantages when it comes to this. Not for us, for example, the necessity to put the verb at the end.

Thinking aloud, how about this: a not outrageously long sentence with four basic elements, putting forward a fairly simple scenario:

1) I walked into the room and saw that Jim had sat down in the purple armchair, the better to blow his tea cool and talk to Arabella, who had an expression of resigned amusement on her face.

2) Walking into the room I saw that Arabella, with an expression of resigned amusement on her face, was being talked to by Jim, who had sat down in the purple armchair the better to blow his tea cool.

3) Arabella had an expression of resigned amusement on her face, as I saw when I walked into the room, and was talking to Jim, who was blowing his tea cool as he sat in the purple armchair.

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The camp area was fenced on all sides, obliging us to listen to a convoluted explanation of the connection between capitalism and climate change from a well-spoken youth guarding the entry gate. He was sitting on a bale of hay.

Bringing down capitalism appealed to me much more than my ecologically-conscious friend D’s approach. Her latest claim to the moral high-ground includes knitting waistcoats for rescued battery hens. I’d much rather man the barricades.



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I'm not yet ready to blog about what it's like to have moved countries, that kind of thing, I am still musing, so I thought I'd bring some exciting news from Short Story World. First, Electric Literature, the new lit zine that is available in print, as an eBook, or for your Kindle of iPhone, and pays its contributors a wonderful $1000 per story (!) has taken an exciting step into the world of animation and asked animators to create a very short film based on one line from each of the pieces they published in Issue 1. Here, for example, is Jonathon Ashley's take on a sentence from Michael Cunningham's novel excerpt:........

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I made the mistake of clicking on my website in front of my son (aged 9). He howled with derision and called his sister (11) over.

"No, Dad, no! Colour clash! It's so amateurish! You should have got us to do it! That's terrible!" All this was accompanied by much laughter, and the occasional patronising "Aww" at a particularly inept bit of design on my part. It comes to something when you're patronised by your own kids.

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Bloody Trent waking me up with his telephone call earlier. Okay, so it had gone noon and I should have been up but did he really have to ring just to tell me he was flying in from L.A. on Wednesday? I already knew that and okay, we have been friends since we were kids but did he also have to do it just as he was about to get it on with yet another of his gullible fans? Listening to Trent's sex life was definately something I could live without and I certainly was not going for a night out clubbing with him. That just entailed drinking, sex, more drinking and more sex....for him that is, not me. I can't be bothered with all the hoo-ha surrounding him on his nights out. The club's treat him like royalty, almost pouring the drink down his throat and rounding up all worthy girls to surround him,while backstage they call all the papparazzi for those free publicity pictures of yet another actor leaving their establishment. Me, I prefer a much more quiet night.

I couldn't get to sleep after that and ended up watching Murder She Wrote on the TV before switching over to Jerry Springer. I should have ended our friendship just for having to endure that. Where do they find those people?

Now I am hungry and just waiting for the room service I ordered twenty minutes ago. Infact, after I've eaten I might phone Trent back. Lets see, he would have probably just gone to sleep......

was squeezing into a tight and extremely short sequin dress. Stunning as it was, movement was very limited and to protect my modesty the attractive stranger I had met gently pulled the rising material down only for it to expose my boobs. Who said chivalry was dead.