It´s not unusual to see storks in the centre of Zamora

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Welcome back, Vanessa. Last time you were here we were talking about short stories. Now you’ve edited a guide to them. So, Editor Gebbie, could you tell us a little about Short Circuit – A Guide to the Art of the Short Story?

Thanks Nik, it’s great to be back, and thanks for the invite. I love being Editor Gebbie! It’s been a terrific project: knackering, exciting, challenging and frustrating by turns. Compiling something like this, identifying the right writers, working with all 24 of them, has been at times like herding cats – with myself the worst of the cats to herd, I might add. But I am very very proud of the finished book.



Who’s it for?

It’s for anyone who wants to write short stories. Maybe someone who had a go, and discovered that actually, writing good ones is not as easy as some people think! It’s aimed at students on writing courses, maybe at the universities, maybe not. It’s aimed at people who are already writing them, and want to do it better, stronger, differently. It’s aimed at people like me (they always say write for yourself, don’t they??) who may want a refresher. A ‘shot in the arm’. A reminder that when things don’t go right that there are a whole load of superb writers out there who share that feeling and can offer insights, ideas, inspiration.

But also, I’ve been told it is a good companion volume for anyone who enjoys reading short stories, to understand the craft behind the scenes, to be introduced to the works that inspire the writers. It’s a fun, fascinating and engaging read.



How much do you think good writing/ story telling is down to intuition, as opposed to what can be learned from How-To books, forums, and workshops?

Good question! I’ve met a few ‘how-to’ books that didn’t help me to the ‘how’ at all, and were just platforms for ‘look at moi!’ from the author.

But is good writing/storytelling just something we are born with? Let’s look at storytelling first. That’s innate in us all. It goes back to dark nights in caves, round the fire, weaving stories to explain the rising of the sun and the movement of the stars night on night. When you listen to a voice telling a story, are in the presence of the teller, it is a mesmerising experience. You can get totally caught up with the world of the story. The word ‘novel’ seems to have its origins in the ‘news’ taken from one town to another, and relayed by word of mouth… then slowly, so the story goes, the sequence of events were juggled to make people wait to find out what happened… to make a better ‘story’…as people listened, they were caught up in the events of that other town.

It’s not so easy for the written word to have that transporting effect on the reader. But with a following wind and a bit of peace, the reader can sink into a story and disappear in the fictive dream in the same way – and there are good strong craft skills behind that, in the writing. Each time the craft falters, the writer stumbles into the reader’s space, and the dream breaks. A badly crafted piece will not have the same mesmerising, dreamlike effect effect on the reader.

Craft is a skill and it can be taught. But one thing that stultifies the learning experience for this awkward cuss is that I always find this - if a single person is trying to tell me how to do something as complex as creative writing, I lose patience as soon as one thing they say differs from my own experience. But give me a range of tutors, with slightly different approaches, ideas, voices… I may be more willing to listen. To try new things. To come closer to my own creativity – and no one else’s.

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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.



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I've always been suspicious of the spider that lives under the bath. What does he do there all day? Plotting and planning, organising his kingdom come the revolution, I imagine.

So I wrote a little story, Eensy Weensy, about this evil wee beastie, which Bewildering Stories have published this week.

Also, check out Oonah V Joslin's poem, Whatever Happened to Tea - and Sympathy?

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So, I've got the work-in-progress - let's call it Three - which will absorb me for at least another nine months of revising and editing and contracts and editors and stuff. And Four, which I've told my agent I want to write next (up to and including a half-page pitch and a highly provisional title). Then there's the one which I thought was a short story till I took it for a walk in the park: now it's a novel. So is it Five? Or is it so compelling - so much sparklier and meatier - that it should be Four? And there's the short story which a writer friend gave the once-over before I put it in a competition, and said in passing, 'The mark of a great short story (for me) is that its ten or so pages open up an entire novel in the reader’s mind.' So of course I started thinking round the edges of the story, which is one I've known for ages: could this be Five? And the people in Spain who said 'Would you set a novel here?' and I said, 'I don't think so,' but on the way home found myself thinking, 'Well...'. And I daren't start flipping back through notebooks, because then there'll be more.

I've thought before about writerly adultery, but that's not what I'm thinking about here: I'm not about to cuckold the WIP. But how do you choose what to take seriously next? What will you be living and breathing even when you're nowhere near a notebook or a screen? What - without your trying - will make you suddenly see newspaper cuttings, and comments and pictures and fleeting ideas, as you go about the rest of life? Where, for your serious project, do you go next?

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My very short story, Say My Name has just gone live over at the brilliant Word Riot - click here to read it.

And if you'd like to hear me reading it you can click here.



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How do writers decide what to write? There is a romanticised idea that writers stick steadfastly to their muse, creating an innovative piece of work that is a mirror to their soul. This is, in some part, true. However, those writing for publication must bend to commerce and produce as certain format and write within fairly strict genre.

A piece of fiction is a communication between the writer and the reader and as soon as it is created becomes subjective. The difference between a list of instructions, which is fairly objective, and a story is a beginning, middle, and end, characters and also a temporal aspect. A story lays out, in a familiar format, a narrative of where, when, why and how something happens. Part of the reason fiction is so popular is that it mirrors the way we live every day.



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Wheels... November 2009
Wheels have always been a really important and integral part of my life. The big black shiny but scuffed pram was deep, to put shopping under the baby, which was used for the last four children was then used by us all to collect jam jars and take them to the jam factory and get a penny each for them.

We found other wheels of all sizes and made trolleys and pulled each other around on them to give rides. Better fun going down hills and letting go so the little passenger crashed Amidst great shrieks of fear then wailing with pain and scraped and bleeding legs. We learned very early about the pecking order and survival of the fittest. It was all survival training.
We put our Guy for Guy Fawkes on our trolley and trailed it around the town centre asking for “A penny for the guy mister? Mrs?” And bought our fireworks with the money we earned from our initiative and some people would say, cheek.
We had metal roller skates and were so excited when we got rubber coated wheels ones. We thought they were wonderful. Smooth running.
We had scooters and I ran away on my scooter when I was 8 and life at home got too much. It was 15 miles away and 15 weary miles back and I got into lots of trouble. The priest at confession was very impressed at the distance I had scooted
We are railway children so we went on lots of trains. Great big oily heavy wheels on the steam engines were taller than I was.
Bikes were essential to any child’s life and we had all kinds of home made hybrid bikes. We could ride 2 wheeler bikes from an early age as we all shared each other toys. Not just my family. Our street gang. We could all mend punctures from an early age and bent our mums forks and spoons!! We cleaned our bikes and had shiny wheels. We did fast and slow bicycle races. We put lots of people on these bikes, crossbar rides, stand up pedalling with someone else on the saddle.. Could do wheelies too.
An interesting ploy was to fasten a plank onto two crossbars and see how many people we could give rides to. Steering was difficult but there were very few cars on our Railway estate.
One day we were out with our dog Judy and we called her to cross the road and a great big lorry ran over her. We were hysterical and upset and screamed tearful accusations at the man “you killed our dog!” The poor distressed lorry driver put all of us and our dead dog on to the back of his lorry and took us home. He was crying too. We did a solemn ceremony of burying our beloved dog in the field at the bottom of our garden and made a wooden cross and were only comforted by being told that we would see her in Heaven. We were placated.
We helped the milkman and the baker and they delivered their produce on a horse and cart. Once a big cartwheel ran over my brother Roger’s foot which caused him pain for some weeks and gave us free cakes for the duration of his pain which pleased us enormously. My mum cook make cakes but these were posh shop ones.
We used to jump on the bank of the steamroller which flattened roads for a ride home. It was exciting when the first combine harvester came and we rode on that at harvest time, playing in the hayricks and making camps. It made a change to riding sheep, pigs and ponies and any of the farm animals we all dared and double dared each other to ride.

During the bus strike I cycled 10 miles each way to school. I was 12. My mum always thought that I met The Cranford Woods murderer. I was cycling home from school along an open road with no houses and just the woods next to it. A man on a motor bike kept overtaking me and stopping and let me overtake him. Then he overtook me and started to talk to me. “Would you like to come for a walk with me in the woods? “ he asked. “OK”I said. NO ALARM BELLS SOUNDED We walked along a path and we sat down on the grass and he asked me “Would you like to have a look at my dean?” I didn’t know the word but I was feeling very uncomfortable and said that I had better be going home as my mummy would be worrying about me, and pedalled furiously along the “No Cycling “ path. I didn’t like to tell my mum, because she would have been very cross with me for being so gullible and stupid. Two weeks later there was a brutal murder of a woman cyclist in these woods and I tried to remember what the man looked like. The police came round. The murderer was never found.

I used to cycle 6 miles each way to Guides from the time I was 11. I cycled to the cake factory for 4 summers where I rolled 1.200 Swiss Rolls an hours, put the jam in doughnuts and the made the creamy whirls on gateaux.

My lecherous brother in law taught me how to drive in his plumber’s van when I was sweet seventeen. . I didn’t like being touched up but didn’t like to complain to my mum or sister.. There was no other way I could afford to learn to drive.





I had a pop pop bike, a motor scooter and a James 150 cc motor bike. All were sold to me by my little brother Kevin. I rode all over London when I was a nurse at Hammersmith Hospital. All that time I didn’t know that I was short sighted. At this great hospital we were taught patient care and didn’t have to make the bed wheels parallel. I collected up all kinds of wheeled vehicles, spare blankets and tarpaulins from the basement and evacuated a whole orthopaedic ward to see The Queen when she opened the MRC building. I didn’t think to ask anyone’s permission . I stayed on the ward with 3 people I judged too sick to go.
Everybody returned thrilled that the Queen looked just at them. We all worked about 13 hours that day as split shifts were abandoned.
I hitch hiked 30,000 miles on other people’s wheels.
I cycled London to Brighton 3 times on 3 different bikes. I used to have a 1935 Rudge junior back tandem and my daughter Gillian and I cycled to Brighton on that. I spent 3 weeks in Holland with my daughters and our bikes and the tired one rode the tandem. They tell me they didn’t pedal at all.
My daughters and a cousin Sharon spent a great week one half term on bikes going to Panshanger Gold Course for pitch and put, then to Stanborough Lakes for canoeing, then to Lemsford Village with me in the evenings for archery.

I was taken away in Ambulances on various occasions when I had big fits. In 2000 I was involved in a big car crash which wasn’t my fault. I was taken to hospital in an ambulance with a bleeding ear and I asked the ambulance men if I could have flashing lights and sirens as this was the very first ambulance ride that I had been conscious for. But they wouldn’t. I have a pond and a pink terrace and a summer house with the compensation.
I spent a day as an observer with the police last year and they happily used flashing lights and sirens. Boys with their toys.
We cycled around Greenham Common when American Cruise Missiles were there. There were many of us and we slept in a Methodist Hall and the next morning we were very stiff!! We tried to ride each other’s bikes but there is nothing like the comfort zone of one’s own bike.
I was broke and traumatised in 1983 when my husband left but we all had bikes and I made all the girls things continue including cycling to Hatfield Pool for their swimming lessons every week. We had lots of lights on the bikes. I spent 20 months including 2 winters on my bike. I was often very wet and very cold. I am resilient. To ameliorate this situate this situation and to accelerate myself out of poverty, I decided to have lodgers. My first one was a wonderful girl, Judy who was a student with a car. A 2CV. Her brother was the master brain behind 2CVs in Britain. She bullied him to get me affordable wheels and so a red 2CV, which had JWL as numberplates, and we called it Jewel came into our lives and kept us dry and expanded our horizons. When that one died I had another red 2CV.
I got on my bike and got a job and c

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I was chuffed to get a text message from Sarah the Publisher the other day advising me to check out a review of Yuck 1 written by someone in AMERICA! How exciting is that? Take a look for yourself - the link is http://www.literacylaunchpad.blogspot.com/ and it was written as part of a scheme to get 100 bloggers to review 100 'great books' printed in an environmentally friendly way! It makes me blush to relate that the reviewer's kind words and complete understanding of the whole concept of Yucketypoo damn near brought a tear to my unpracticed eye! It reminded me just how proud I am of it! I so want it to become read worldwide because its message does affect the entire world! In fact I can't believe it hasn't reached more people yet because it is just so completely unique! There is nothing else like it on the market - even its sequels are totally different - but, as hard as I have tried to get someone of note to comment on it, it still remains something of a non-entity. Ah well - good things come to those who wait, I guess. And getting a review from America is but definitely a step in the right direction.



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