I’ve never been much sold on the idea of job security. The thought of toiling for a particular employer until it’s time to cash in my working life for a gold carriage clock just doesn’t rock my socks. Which doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to do so; it’s just not right for me.


Read Full Post

We all know conflict is essential in fiction. There must be conflict right from the word go, otherwise no one will ever, EVER read our stories.

The conflict on the page, however, is the least of what it means to be a writer. We have other inner battles to contend with. Whether, for example, to leave the computer and do some exercise or whether to stay put and eat another Jaffa Cake. But the internal conflict I didn't anticipate was the one over trying to talk about my book ...


Read Full Post

I didn't sleep so well last night, and it wasn't because I was nervous about the reading today. It was more that I have so much to say about short stories, I was worried about not being able to say it all! ........

Read Full Post

Sue Wright is married with three children and a tortoiseshell cat and lives in Worthing in West Sussex. Her main hobby is reading and her ambition is to have a novel published one day. Sue says she prefers writing "weird" stories best.


My first sale was…
to Take A Break’s Fiction Feast in 1998!

My family think my writing is…
silly –until the money comes in.

The best/worst thing about writing short stories for magazines is…
best is seeing them published and illustrated– worst is all the rejections. Never gets any easier to cope with them.

Long hand first or computer?
Computer first.

On completing a story I feel…
very satisfied.


Read Full Post

Catalyst-for-trouble Ginney, in a sparkling performance from Sarah Mann, is well balanced by an exasperated David Whiting as Philip, who paces the stage shouting 'Where's the hoe?' or wriggles on tenterhooks at the dinner table where one false word could be his undoing. Here too, as with 'Woman in Mind' the garden is a metaphor for troubled marriage.



Read Full Post

How do I get thee to sleep? Let me count the ways... Over the years I have tried a variety of methods with the pair of them: rocking, breastfeeding, rocking while breastfeeding, womb music, lavender baby bubble bath, singing the same damn song every night, wearing a cuddly toy down my bra all day and then putting it in the cot at bedtime, pushchair, car, sling, eliminating certain foods, loading them up with soporific dinners, chasing them around the garden for two hours, blackmail, bribery, and tearful pleading...

Read Full Post

One of the things I've noticed, among the more thoughtful and less ooe-er-vicar-ish of the reviews of In Bed With, is that they often say, 'Some of these are real erotica/only erotica, whereas others are short stories with sex in them.' The 'real/only' division is the giveaway: do they approve more of the former, or the latter? The more I think about this difference, the more I begin to feel that it actually reflects a much wider question about what fiction's for, and how it works.

This anecdote is relevant, so stay with me. I think it's Don McCullin who has a story of driving along one night, and seeing a man sitting on the kerb having a heart attack. He could either take a picture which his instincts said might turn out to be one of the truly great pictures, or he could go and help immediately. He took the picture, and then went to help, and ultimately the man died: who knows if he would have been saved, if help had arrived three minutes earlier?

Read Full Post

I read a great post the other day on the Strictly Writing blog:


http://strictlywriting.blogspot.com/2009/02/never-ending-quest.html (I hope you don't mind me linking this, Caro)
I think that everything in this post is true and sums up some of the things that I've been experiencing lately with this whole 'getting published thing'.


First off, all you want is to finish your work to a point that you're 'happy' with it. Then all you want is to hear that someone else likes it. Then it's an agent that is top of your

Read Full Post

As I once again approach submission time, I am bracing myself for failure. Not in a woe-is-me, lack of confidence way, rather from a position of realism based on past experience. I thought I’d pull out all the rejection letters I’ve saved from the last four years and take a browse – but I couldn’t. Some are still too painful. So why keep them all, like some tatty love-letters from a failed relationship? I’m not sure. In a way it’s because they validate the time I’ve spent writing novels. They are tangible proof that I have tried, I have worked hard – that I have put myself ‘out there’.

Surely I should have developed a rhino’s skin after all this time? Surely the rejection still doesn’t hurt? For the most part, I can logically deal with disappointment - tell myself that a standard rejection isn’t necessarily a condemnation of my work. And I appreciate the odd personal comment, I grasp at the occasional letter which is worded with encouragement. But now and again I get caught out. And the obsessive, emotional process is usually as follows and I wonder if it’s the same for you?

1) Paranoia – why has the agent not replied yet? My submission must have got lost in the post. Perhaps in my covering letter I didn’t grovel enough – or maybe I sounded arrogant. The agent must be on holiday or she’s ill or at some book fair abroad. Perhaps it was a mistake calling the hero and heroine Gordon and Mandy because if she’s Conservative it won’t make it off her slushpile.



Read Full Post

As previously discussed, I am more than a little 'challenged' in the technological knowledge department. (We're on to Web 2.0 already? Really??) Forgive me, therefore, if you've already heard about any or all of the following websites and software, or if I fail to do them justice with my brief explanations of what they are and what you can do with them. I was just so impressed - and in a few cases delighted - when I came across them in my recent bout of web-wandering that I wanted to spread the word. I hope that others out there may be just as pleasantly surprised by them as I was.


Read Full Post