The importance of being less earnest.

It’s been a week where my career has been the prevalent factor and so my writing has been slower. However, I see it as a positive thing; I’ve padded the limited time outside with poetry (Jacob Sam-La Rose, Lorca and Plath to be precise) and had time to catch breath and think.

It can be too easy to get caught up in sending work out. Maybe, just maybe, the new writer determined to be published is sometimes a little hasty; sending a piece with a few barnacles left on it still. I’ve just stated probably the worst thing any writer could admit to. But it’s true – especially in these early stages.

The value of revisiting and editing work can not be emphasised enough. It’s probably the toughest lesson to learn; only send it when it’s good enough. If not only to save receiving yet another rejection, then to save your reputation! If you can’t get another writer (I suffer from this scenario) then leave it aside a few weeks, a month or two before revisiting. But remember, sometimes it’s a dud; accept that.

Edit enough and you’ll reap the rewards. This gentle week has bore some very nice fruit indeed; The Ranfurly Review has accepted my submissions Shadow Puppets and On My Father: Sheik Mohammad Jallow for their 3rd issue which will be published in June. My latest six sentences flash fiction has gone live, along with another of my Dogmatika haiku.

I’ve also an agreement from Jacob Sam-La Rose to review his Arts Council commissioned piece Magnitude (you can read my review here). Now lets just hope the Arts Council will let me reproduce the poem…

My writing and reasons

My reason for writing is, as all who write will tell you, twofold: I love it and I feel compelled.

I have a strong recollection of being laughed at when I openly declared “I want to be a poet, an artist or a teacher” to adults on the rough council estate where I grew up. In Southbank, Middlesbrough, most adults have never worked a day in their lives and have no compunction about it.

I dabbled with art but chose not to follow that path, preferring the enticing words of Aeschylus and Ovid over the call of smeared paint and pastel dust (which I still cover myself in from time to time; words and art are inseparable).

I taught in English schools for five years before leaving native shores and, finally, settling in Andalucia. After abandoning a failed marriage I somehow ended up ricocheting myself into a more familiar yet chaotic world and my need to write has reawakened as my life has settled into this happy maelstrom.

In the last year, I have been overjoyed with my progress; I’ve had workshops with Ruth Padel, Tobias Hill, Chris Hamilton Emery; seen Tony Harrison, AL Kennedy and Ali Smith in their finery, amongst others. I spent an intense week with The Blue Nose poets Mario Petrucci and Sue Hubbard in a charming Andalucian village, and I’ve written two draft zero novels; each in the space of a month.

My website has grown as submissions have been accepted by The Beat, 3am, Dogmatika, Six Sentences and Savage Manners. My understanding has doubled as I’ve received rejections and suggestions from Mslexia, Straight from the Fridge and Wolf etc.

But the point is; there’s no way I could get jaded.

May many more big shouts of NO and snippets of reasons why pile into my stuffed Spanish letterbox and guide me.