Llanito: en mi language

 

I have taken a hiatus from this blog for nigh on three years, maybe slightly longer. Life sometimes gets in the way - work, the dullness of routine that serves to numb creativity, the grind of getting each day done that stifles so many of those who might want, wish, would and should write their stories and tell their tales. Myself included, clearly.

But I've not been away entirely.

Since my last blog post, I have published a non-fiction book, co-written with my eldest daughter, Ciara Wild. Myth Monster Murder explored the story of Jack the Ripper, how the gruesome Whitechapel murders were, and are, mythologised by the media, how at least five women became the victims of his blood-happy knife, and of the gore-addicted press, victims themselves, perhaps, of rampant commercialism. Why did the murders take place and could they happen again, we ask ourselves in the book. I won't tell you the answer. The book is readily available on Kindle or on paperback through Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones, Foyles....so treat yourselves!

Myth Monster Murderer by Jackie Anderson and Ciara Wild

That feat wore me out a little, so my writing became more of a dabbling, an early morning pre-breakfast gathering of thoughts and toying with the keys of my laptop, or the occasional scribbling in a notebook of disparate ideas, sentences and phrases that appear irrationally and unannounced into my mind and that occasionally drift together into a coherent whole.

But during that rather barren period, something has emerged in Gibraltar that is worthy of dusting down this blog and reawakening it. And that thing - or phenomenon is more approrpriate a word - is Patuka Press and its literary journal, the third issue being entitled: Llanito.

My copy of Llanito from Patuka Press

Here's where you can get your copy of LLanito

I spoke on GBC Breakfast about this back in July. It was a brief interview too early in the morning for me to be fully coherent so apologies to listeners, but in it I spoke not just about my writing and my book and the story I wrote that was published in 'Llanito', but also about the journal. 

I remember having conversations with fellow Gibraltarian Writers some years ago, shortly after a group of us worked on publishing an Anthology of Gibraltarian Poets (the first anthology of its kind), that centred around the vital importance of having a local outlet that would publish local writing - that is, writing that is not just produced locally, but by writers that have a strong connection with Gibraltar, who may be Gibraltarians living abroad, or people who had spent time in Gibraltar and had stories to tell. 

Writers might well love their craft, they might well be brilliantly skilled storytellers, wordsmiths, playwrights, poets, but if they cannot reach out to readers through some form of publishing, then their words are lost to the rest of us. And that is a literary tragedy, especially in Gibraltar, where there are so many tales to be told and its writers are bursting to tell them.

More than that; we want to tell them in our language, in Llanito, in the words that shape who and what we are as a people, and as an individual person.

In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of initiatives that have started to provide recognition for Gibraltar's writers, and outlets for their work. Among many other features, Gibraltar now has a Literature Week which this year is going to form part of the Gibraltar Literary Festival; there is a local book shop at last, which stocks works by local writers and about Gibraltar; there is increasing recognition, academically and among Gibraltarians, that our language is a clear and valid language that is part of our cultural identity. Social media and interest from GBC through various programmes such as Between the Lines, has helped tremendously. Young writers are daring to write and publish and not worry about whether what they have written is 'literature' or not; they do not care about meeting some vague and undefined standard of what is literature and don't question whether they can stand up to comparison with Dickens, Byron, Orwell or Rowling. Who wants to be like all the others anyway? We are who we are and say what we say and from what I'm reading of Gibraltarian writers, some can proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with other writers from other countries, or spine to spine on the shelves of any bookshop or library anywhere.

The joy of seeing this growth in local writing is immeasurable, more so when seeing that so much is now written in Llanito. Despite the decriers and nay-sayers, and I am not going to waste any energy wading into that argument, we are finally openly exploring what it means to be 'us', to speak in our own language, to write our own stories. What Patuka Press has achieved with Llanito is to put a stamp of approval, a public accreditation if you like, on writing in llanito. And that goes a long way to saving our dwindling language. As Charles Durante put it in his essay 'Llanito: Grammar, Etymology and Identity' in LLanito:

    "It would be a very sad day if Llanito were to disappear, as some have gleefully            predicted. It would be like losing a limb, a form of spiritual emasculation."

I can't help but agree. It would be a tragedy with far-reaching effects; the loss would be far more visceral than the loss of a gathering of words.

So the impact of Patuka Press and its collections of stories, poems and essays should not be understated. To local readers it provides an affirmation of who and what we are culturally; we laugh and nod our heads in recognition of ourselves and our community, we marvel at the novel and the new that is being created day to day by talented Gibraltarians, we gasp at the variety of imaginative skill on show between the pages. That this third issue explores and celebrates Llanito, hablando de mi people en mi language, is testament to the surfacing of our love for Gibraltarian culture, our willingness to explore talk about what makes us us, the sunshine and the rain, the beautiful and the ugly, the whole gamut of Gibraltarianness, warts and all. The journal is both an achievement in itself, and I hope, it is also the soil in which our literary growth as a people will take root and find succour.

The next steps for Gibraltarian literature? It is, despite the decriers and nay-sayers among us, a growing, living thing but it is still young, it still needs a helping hand from those that can and from the whole community. Here are some ideas:

• Another publishing house. Patuka Press and Calpe Press and self-publishing may be wonderful things but we need the competitiveness of alteranative publishers to hone our skills and thrust our writing output into the realms of quality and not just quantity.
• Setting a high bar. Again, quality. It isn't just about work being published because it's been written or even because it's good. It's got to be good enough.
• A writing residency, where the writer in residence (perhaps selected from numerous applications to the National Book Council) works for 1 - 2 years as a writer, running workshops, producing work, organising readings, running writing groups, attending seminars, book and literary events in other countries, mentoring writers and so on.

Our literature is being read and analysed across the world. It's got to reach globally high standards and all those editors and publishers working with Gibraltarian writing, whether a news channel or a freebie magazine, a publisher of books or a literary journal, or a competition judge have to start to apply a bar. It is not enough for a writer to submit work and be published, it has to be quality work.

And while all that is going on, get yourself a copy of Llanito. I picked one up from Amazon because I happened to be in UK when it came out, but Bookgem sells it. And then get the other two issues: Shit Jobs and Borders and Boundaries. You'll find one of my stories published in each of the three editions, and I'm not just proud that my submissions were selected for publication; I am privileged.

Shit Jobs by Patuka Press

Borders and Boundaries by Patuka Press

Books, Glorious Books!

 

As this first week of March slips away, a week when we usually celebrate World Book Day - this year on 4th - I finally got back to a little bit of writing. Other than some entries in my journal, and the day job, I have actively avoided any kind of writing, especially creative writing, and including this blog. But I couldn't resist it. Reading tends to make me reach for my pen, and, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is something in which I wanted to indulge what snippets of spare time I have.

A browse through the internet and especially my own social media showed the usual flurry of activity for World Book Day. Despite the drawbacks of the pandemic and the lockdown which is still only slowly lifting, it did my weary soul a good deal of good to see kids heading for school dressed up as their favourite characters and many of them with the associated book in their bags. 

What I did find rather churlish was some snarky comments on social media, from somewhat sour adults mostly, decrying the youngsters for dressing up as characters from films, notably as Harry Potter and his many chums. What is their issue? Maybe these are people who, aware of their own shortcomings in the literary department, are all too quick to criticise others. As a mother of six who has spent most of her life skint and bringing the kids up on a hard-earned shoestring, Harry Potter was a glorious relief; throw a length of black cloth over their shoulders, borrow Grandma's specs, hand each a twig from the garden and voila, World Book Day dressing up sorted.

The Harry Potter films, like many others that are based on books, like Matilda and Four Children and It, are wonderful examples of skillful storytelling. They have a narrative with pace and drama, with humour and darkness, with flights of fantasy and yet are believable. They touch human themes such as bullying, lack of self-confidence, courage, fear, the search for love, and, most importantly, of the struggle between good and evil. Why would immersing yourself in the movies be anything other than a superb way of helping kids explore narrative, character development, dialogue, scene construction and so much more. Let's bear in mind that scripts are written, and that scriptwriting is as much a form of writing as a Jacobean tome. Consider the tight dialogue of Pulp Fiction, or Casablanca, or Taxi Driver or One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest...I could go on and on. All hail those scriptwriters - what talent, and what art!

And if the kids haven't read those books yet, they probably will. And they will probably read more. The work their teachers put into World Book Day will often bear fruit, if not immediately, then often in years to come. Don't knock it. Far better to immerse yourself in a good movie and the story it tells than in scrolling and trolling.

But back to books. Bookshops have had a pretty hard time over the past decade or two, especially with the advent of Amazon and other commercial problems like the general demise of the High Street. Not least in Gib, where I still mourn for the loss of even the small book shops we had. And yet, when the world closed in on itself in the face of Covid19 and locked down, our isolation was assuaged by books and by reading. Online sales have soared. Booksellers found themselves working harder than ever to get orders of print books out to their customers and their customers were now from all over the world, and not just those from the nearby streets. Readers turned to e-books but found renewed pleasure in print books. With more time on their hands through furlough schemes, many people turned to old classics...you know, the ones where they watched the movie and now thought they'd try the original in book form.

I set out this year to read more Gibraltarian writers, to immerse myself in Gibraltarian literature and try to understand it a little. I might love reading - would love to read all day everyday if I could - but sadly I need to earn a crust and the day job takes exactly that, all darned day. But I have manage to read some, starting with Gooseman, by Mark Sanchez. 

What a great start to my reading year. Brilliant. Funny. Dark. Shocking. And he tackles some great themes, like mental health and racism and Brexit and how the Brits treat their former colonials, and how we, the former colonials, still try to be their lap dogs. Also, as a Gibraltarian and with the novel set partly in Gibraltar and partly in London with the odd llanito comment thrown in, I found there was a familiarity about the characters and the places that drew me in straight away. More than that, there is an almost intangible Gibraltarian quality about the book. Perhaps it's the rhythm of the sentences, or perhaps it's that there is a sense that the lead character, Johann Guzman, is laughing at himself at times, just like we, in Gibraltar, readily laugh at ourselves too.

I've also got through a Giselle Green - also Gibraltarian in my eyes even if she has lived in UK for many years. She writes beautiful stories that touch on some of our deepest emotions. The Girl you Forgot speaks about memory and about relationships and about truth. Some parts of it are almost lyrical and yet it flows and undulates as do the hills of England where Giselle lives. It is a satisfying and emotional journey of a story.

Humbert Hernandez' El Agente Aleman was just perfect for grey winter days; it cheered me up no end. The stories are so funny in places, I laughed out loud, which was disconcerting to passers by as I perched on a low wall waiting for my cab to work one morning (some of us would have loved to lock down fully but couldn't). These stories are told in our tongue, the language of my early childhood in the old town of Gibraltar and are populated by people that are recognisable, although dwindling in numbers as they age and pass on, just as the patio culture of the middle of last century is dwindling and disappearing into apartment block living. But Hernandez has kept those stories alive, and those characters live on, at least in these fictional works.

I've also managed a thriller and am currently making my way through Greek myths in Stephen Fry's Mythos. Next up on my e-reader is a Joanne Harris, Peaches for M. le Cure, and on my bedside table is a Mary Chiappe novel, Shaking the Dandelions.

As for my writing? It's simmering. I've sketched out some ideas, pottered with some research. Oh, and I've just signed a publishing contract no less. But more about that in another post. For now, I am wallowing in books, glorious books, and always wanting more!

Taking a break: a resolution for writing for 2021

 

There goes the first week of January 2021. Back when life was normal (as in, this time last year) the first week of January for me would be a time for tackling writing projects with the renewed vigour born of a rest over Christmas and perhaps one or two resolutions. My writing resolutions normally involved things like: I will unfailingly set aside two evenings and one afternoon each week to dedicate to writing fiction or poetry or whatever I'm inspired to write. Or: I will complete project X this year and start on project Y. Or something similar. More often than not, by February I would have forgotten these or been distracted by a new project or a fresh idea.

This year, no resolutions for writing. Blame the pandemic, blame my age, blame my hormones, blame my steadily depleting bank account. Heck, blame Brexit and the riot in Washington last week. But I know the reality is that that I need to take some time to stop. A pause in which to reflect on last year, on this year, on today and on tomorrow. 

I am one of those writers who has not been remotely creative in lockdown. I did put together an e-book of short stories at Christmas to raise money for charity, but they were mainly written some time ago. Unashamed promotion, so here's the link:

All They Want for Christmas by Jackie Anderson

But other than this and 'work' writing, there was nothing. Not a squeak of nib on paper that left other than a meaningless scrawl.

There's something grim and insidious, nasty, to tell the truth, about this odd pressure to be creative, to do something worthwhile with this extra time that we apparently all have. Well, try telling a nurse doing double shifts at the CCU, that he's got more time. Or a police officer, or a firefighter, or a road sweeper or a rubbish collector or the supermarket shelf-stacker. And yet the TV and radio and social media are blurting away ideas and examples of all the creative things people are doing in lockdown, which have a tendency to make you feel a bit inadequate if you simply can't get anything remotely meaningful to hang together into a paragraph let alone complete a poem or story.

So this post is being written to declare, loud and proud that actually, getting through a pandemic like this is tough and if you haven't got the energy left for your creative project or learning a new skill, that's ok. If you're getting through each day, then that's enough. Thank you Joe Wicks, the exercises are great for some, and thank you for those musicians and actors laying on online performances, and thank you those writers who pump out prose and poetry brilliantly and publish work precisely because they have to stay at home. I mean it. The creatives have kept most of us ticking over reasonably well. We have had entertainment, and we have learned new things.

But, if like me, your work (real work that puts bread and butter on the kitchen table) did not slow down, just shifted location, or you stepped up a gear caring for locked down family members, or you were simply too anxious to concentrate, you are not alone. And if your feelings about the pandemic - fears, anxiety, impatience, even incredulity - left your pen dry, you are definitely not alone. I have been dry as a bone since the start of last year, and I was greatly relieved to surf the net and found many writers saying similar.

So in 2021, I plan to read my way out of pandemic-induced writer's block. I will read for pleasure, mainly, not for instruction or to broaden my mind. I have no intention of straining my brain, just to rest it and enlighten it. I will enjoy the delights created by talented others. I will finally spend time listening to music that I kept meaning to listen to but never tried. I will listen to podcasts and possible audiobooks. I will explore the theatre online and visit online museums and places I am never likely to visit even when lockdown lifts and travel is permitted once again. I'll watch classic movies and binge watch Netflix. I might do some yoga stretches, maybe, if I can find the energy. But I certainly won't allow myself to feel guilty if I don't. There'll be enough negativity to deal with while vaccines are rolled out and start to work and hopefully the relentless gloom starts to lift. 

If I write, it will be because I have to write for work (somehow I never class my feature writing as writing, probably because I want to be a fiction writer), or I write some journal entries, or letters to family and friends, or because finally the creative spark has been relit. I might well add posts to this blog, just to keep the fingers remembering how to type.

I do know that some Gibraltar Writers are busy working on a number of projects, and some plan to start new writing projects this year. Others are less sure of their plans but plan to write more. Which pleases me hugely, and hopefully they will provide lots of reading material: one of the things I want to do this year, is read as much Gibraltar writing as I get time to read. I hope we can get the library open soon! 

What will you be writing in 2021?

The Joys of Journaling

Journals and creativity

I have a confession to make. I have not kept a journal since my mid-teens, and that grubby old notebook was abandoned after a few months when I realised that it was full of nothing more than the bleating of an angst-ridden adolescent with little to say beyond the ghastly state of her skin, the ghastly burden of homework and the ghastly thought of exercising in daylight in order to shed the extra pounds she always carried around her hips. Not very 'writerly', perhaps, but that was just me.

But, having pondered on finding ways to re-ignite my creative mojo, and feeling a sense of the enormity of the times - the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, the impending economic disaster - I thought I might revisit the idea of keeping a journal. Except this time, I want to make it rather more interesting to write than my early attempts, and, with any luck, I might be able to refer to it in future for writing ideas.

Starting to keep a journal

The first step, this week, then, was to make sure I freed up a specific slot in my day for making journal entries. I chose that quiet time between supper and going to bed, just after I've returned from walking the dog. I figured it's when I would be most relaxed and my mind ready to spill out some thinking. And I decided that if I did not make entries daily, that would not matter. If journaling starts to feel like a burden, it will be dumped as readily as I dump many an attempt at dieting.

The next (and pretty enjoyable) step was to choose from among my many blank notebooks (I am a sucker for buying  notebooks. And I'm not a notebook snob - I have plenty of cheap notebooks from places like The Works in UK and Morrison here in Gib gathering dust among a couple of Moleskin). Ditto with the pen. If I was going to release that creative demon, then the weapon had to be just right. And I am also a sucker for buying pens - from felt tips to fountain pens. I settled for an A5 from Morrison in a bright, summery orange and a black biro from The Beacon Press. As cheap as chips. Cheaper, if you try to buy chips at Ocean Village.

And finally, I was ready to write.

But what about? Stumped again, I turned to the internet, and after procrastinating half the afternoon on social media, I googled the word 'journaling'. There is so much out there, the information is bewildering. I sifted through some, avoiding the ones about journaling to improve my life, and journaling being about self care and self discovery, or about stress management or career enhancement, and managed to muster together some ideas.

I guess journaling can be as simple as recording what you've done every day, or things that have impressed you recently, or carved themselves into your mind. You could journal about someone that caught your eye, or a place that left an impression. You can journal about feelings. You can just free write for the day, and that can be quite liberating and lead to some interesting morsels of writing you can use in a more structured piece.

Themes for your journal

I thought I might journal on a theme. I have to be careful though. My intention for writing a journal is to gather some thoughts and ideas, and to free up my writing. That is why I want to journal with a biro. I need the physical act of writing to tap into my creativity. Typing feels too much like being at work to me.

So what theme? Should I write about food, travel, current affairs, health, travel, money, a personal journey into spiritual discovery (no), the weather, the environment, a personal journey from fat and unfit to slimmer, trimmer and fitter (not likely, doomed to failure from the outset!). Should I make it a memoir? Now, that was an interesting thought.

I am not preparing to write a memoir nor an autobiography, but there are many stories stashed away in our memories. Not that we necessarily need to recount them as true to life stories, but sometimes they can inspire interesting pieces of fiction, or poetry. And as those memories are gathered, they become the story of my life, the lives of my children and grandchildren. I wish my mother would write her memories so that they can shed light on my childhood, and I wish my grandparents had the chance to write theirs.

So I think this might be the path I go down. Let's see how far I get and whether I commit to it for any length of time. In the meantime, I dug out an old story I wrote based on a childhood memory. In '71, my family undertook the tricky journey from Gibraltar to Madrid in the early days of the closed border. Madrid was far different then than it is now, but for a seven-year old from Gibraltar who had never before got off the Rock, it was a vast and wonderful city: department stores, trams, the metro, boating lake, kiosks selling ice cream and 'granizado de limon'. And cows. There was a small byre at the bottom of the road where my aunt lived, with a few cows. I had never before seen a cow (nor smelt one!), nor watched one being milked. And here it was going on in a little backwater in one of the world's capital cities.

The memory was vivid and the story came easily. Maybe with the journaling, others will follow. The story, Spilt Milk, is on the Pages section of this blog, for your enjoyment.

Write your way through lockdown

Writing your way through lockdown

One of the many, many positives about writing is that it keeps your mind busy and it diverts your focus for a while from the worries and stresses of the current crisis. At least you can let your mind travel to other times and places and it helps you to create, so you have the added satisfaction of having produced something, despite the conditions.

Short Stories, Tall Tales

I recently collaborated with the teams at Gibraltar Cultural Services, other artists and local teachers to present a set of  creative writing workshops to teenage students as part of the Gibraltar Youth Arts Jamboree. 

The aim of the workshops was to give youngsters some ideas, guidance and tips to get off the ground and to keep going strong with writing short stories, and I used a slide presentation on PowerPoint to structure the workshops.

So, for all those who might want to write their way through staying at home, self-isolation, and in particular if we end up in lockdown during this difficult period, I am providing the PowerPoint below. Perhaps if you are thinking of spending a bit of time each day recording your thoughts and feelings during this time, and want to do so creatively, this will give you an impetus, or some ideas:

Short Stories, Tall Tales by Jackie Anderson

One of the hardest things is starting, said one of the students during one of the workshops. And I agree. Sometimes ideas are flooding through your mind - usually when you're too busy to stop and write them down. And then, when you have booted up the computer, or sharpened your pencil and opened up your crisp, new notebook, your mind goes blank, devoid of words let alone inspiration.

And yet we are living through a time of turmoil. So my advice to anyone wanting to use writing as a creative way of getting through the coming weeks, or as a distraction from the difficulties and the feelings of powerlessness and sadness, is to use those emotions. Make your feelings the starting point for thinking.

Using Feelings for Inspiration

Take anger, for example. Many people are expressing anger - at being forced to stay indoors, at the disruption to their lives, at the virus for the death and suffering, at governments for what are thought to be inadequate reactions, at those who hoarded the loo roll and free range eggs, at life, the universe, fate, God and everything.

Anger is a destructive emotion, we are often told, it is negative and can harm your mental health if you hold on to it. But for a writer, anger is another emotion, a powerful one, that can inspire, influence and inform your writing. Harness its energy, convert it through your words into something constructive and dismiss its destructive power. Writing releases the anger. By the time you've finished a session of writing with anger as a theme, you'll feel infinitely less angry. Maybe it's the physical act of writing it down that disperses that urge to break things. Maybe it's the fact that wondering whether to use a comma or a semi-colon simply diffuses the feeling.

Tips

So for some ideas on using anger - or any other feeling that seems to be dominating your life at the moment - to inspire your writing, try these:

• If you are going to write a journal of your experiences of the Coronovirus pandemic, add an emotional element to your writing. Write about the things that make you feel angry; write why; describe the feeling, how it makes you react physically; describe in detail those things that really have got your goat.
• Write a newspaper report on something you observe while looking at of the window - describe the situation, an event you notice, something you've spotted on TV, or even something completely imaginary. Writing in they style of a reporter is another way of exercising your writing  muscle, of working in perhaps a different style that stretches your technical abilities in writing.
• Create a character who is angry, who shares some of those feelings with you. If you haven't got as far as a story plot yet, don't worry, just get some words down on paper by describing the character in detail: the physical appearance, their likes and dislikes, their back story and why they are angry and the way the anger makes their bodies and their minds react.
• Write a list of comparatives, similes and metaphors for anger. Go to that Thesaurus gathering dust on your shelf or go online. You can then refer back to that list when you are writing another piece of work.
• Write about the situation that is making you angry. Write as if you were talking to a friend about it. Let the words pour out onto the paper. This will help you work with words, to find your own 'voice' - which basically means that you are developing your own unique way of expressing yourself.
• If you have a story in mind already, don't forget anger as an emotion even your hero is allowed to feel. Anger is a healthy, normal response to situations. Feeling anger is okay. It's how you show it that is either appropriate or not. So in your story, think about how your characters express their anger and why, and write down passages that you can then use to enrich your story.

And by the time you've had a go at one or two of those ideas, you'll feel a whole lot better, you'll have entries in your journal or blog or notebook and you won't feel so angry!

Remember, in writing, nothing is ever wasted. In future, these snippets or journal entries or draft stories and poems that you write may become the basis for an award-winning film script or novel or social history of your time. So let's get writing!

Share

Share some of your writing online  - if you'd like to share some of the work you are producing during this period of social distancing and isolation, then please contact me and I will publish your work as a guest contributor to this blog!

If you would like any direct discussion, tips or support with your writing project during this time, comment below or email me: jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk. 

In a Flash

Last week I entered a story into a competition. As I've said in a previous post, writing to competition rules is good discipline and a great (and you never know, possibly profitable) way of practicing the craft of writing.

With a 1000 word limit, this particular competition qualified as flash fiction and, my word, that was tough! I am naturally verbose and this spills over into my writing, but the risk I take with rambling on is that I bore my readers and they put down my writing, never bothering to finish reading the story. So writing to a tight word count is my way of training myself to cut the crap out of my writing. And as a proofreader for several publications, I know just how much of what people write and think is essential, can be cut out, the effect of which is often to tighten a piece of writing until it right to convey the message with maximum impact. Less is more, so they say and in this respect, "they" are right. 

So  here are some of my thoughts on how to write a concise story. This can be applied to other types of writing: features, letters, reports, monologues, scripts, blog posts...

• Write your first draft freely, then work on it - this lets you freely explore your ideas and lets the creativity flow
• Then rework the piece taking all unnecessary words out - these are words that don't add anything to the meaning of the sentence. Like "very" or "really".
• Use strong nouns and verbs and you can get rid of adjectives that don't add to the sense of what you are writing. Try it out, it works.

• Do you need to elaborate on how someone was talking when using dialogue? Readers can become distracted when faced with a variety of ways of speaking. Have them focus on what is being said rather than on whether they whispered softly (how else would you whisper?), or shouted loudly (ouch, too much!). "Said" is often all you need.
• Pick a key emotion on which to hang your story.
• Limit your images: one or two strong images make a more lasting impact than many crammed into a tight word limit.
• Pick a key theme and stick to that one - there is no room in 1000 or fewer words to elaborate or complicate.
• Limit the number of scenes since world building and context setting can take up much of your word count.
• Limit to just one or two characters - make it personal and make it focused and the reader will be swiftly hooked, engaged and rewarded.
• Use a small idea for a small story and reserve big ideas for longer pieces of writing.
• Limit the viewpoints - one character, one viewpoint tends to work best.

Final tip? Just write and enjoy the process. Work hard enough and you may be rewarded for it in a competition win or publication.

Writing for Competitions

A quick browse on the Internet will soon trawl up writing competition after writing competition - short stories, poems, novels, flash fiction, one act plays, and more. Some offer huge prizes and some more modest. Some only go as far as to offer publication in an anthology for the winners and this alone is enough to tempt the writer who yearns for publication. Some come accompanied by fees, some are free to enter. Is it worth while entering work in a competition, was a question recently asked of me by a fellow writer.

That gave me food for thought. I have occasionally entered writing competitions. I've won some, came runner up or highly commended for some, never even heard of the results of numerous others. But I do believe there is value in submitting pieces of writing to competitions that go beyond the obvious one of possibly winning a prize (hopefully a rather chunky cheque, maybe a residential writing retreat and publication to boot).

Firstly there's the discipline of writing to a theme, where there is one, or searching for a theme that inspires you to write and then voicing the story or poem that the theme sparks off. There's the word count to be aware of, the rules that must be followed (every rule needs to be followed, from the layout and font size to submission details and total number of words, otherwise you run the risk of having your entry disqualified before it is even read). You may  have to write to a particular genre or style and this requires focus and discipline so you don't wonder off the track that is laid out for it. And then there's the time element: the dreaded deadline. They are usually set in stone, and cannot be changed, as is the case in most parts of life. 

For the writer who works alone, from home, without a boss or manager to answer to, the regular application of the discipline of meeting a deadline and set requirements that come from entering writing competitions helps to hone your skills as a writing professional. Just because you want to practise your art and perhaps sell it, doesn't mean to say you can get away with shoddy presentation, ignoring important details and not working to precisely what your editor wants - in the case of competitions, it is what the judges and organisers want that you work to meet.

The other benefit of entering writing competitions is to work the creative muscle. It isn't hard, when working on a long project, to get bogged down and stale. Taking a break and writing in a different style or genre is almost like taking a holiday and works to refocus and energise your creativity. You also experience the satisfaction of challenging yourself, writing to completion and submitting your work to be read.

Okay, so that last bit, having your work read, can feel a bit intimidating. But if we're not writing for our words to be read, understood, thought about, reacted to - why are we writing at all? For writers who are still working on developing their craft, or who have never had the courage to submit work to a publisher or magazine editor, it is a way of gaining confidence. When entering competitions, especially if you are sending your work out online to another town or country, you can feel a degree of anonymity. You have never met the judges, you are never  likely to meet them, so what they think of your work doesn't really matter. 

At which point, it's worth remembering that judges of writing competitions are evaluating the writing. Many competitions do not have the work identified by name when it is passed to the judges - they judge the writing in front of them, and a jolly laborious task it must be to pick out a winner from perhaps hundreds or thousands of entries. It is not you as a person or writer that is being judged, it is the piece that you have entered. If you don't win, it is not always because it was not a good piece of work - often it is because on that particular occasion, someone entered a piece of work that was a bit better.

The lessons that can be taken from entering competitions, even if you don't win are various, and they can help you increase in confidence. The more you write, the better a writer you become, so entering is a way of helping to focus your writing even while you work on your magnum opus. If you get feedback on your entry - which some but not all competitions offer - use it to make a better attempt at the next one. If not, read the winners and see what it is they did that made their work rise above yours, and then apply it to your work.

I think there is tremendous value in entering competitions when you can. I say that as a writer who has recently had one of those polite emails of the type: 'thanks for sending us your entry; better luck next time'. But at least I can go back to the keyboard with a dose of reality swallowed: there were 13,000 entries to that particular competition and I can now work on a way to make my next stab at it stand out above that crowd.

Do you plan before you write - or just write?

Always a subject of debate among writers: do you plan out your work first? Do you lay out a structure so you have a road map, a route to your destination? Or are you more impulsive, let your fingers move over the keyboard and let them take your story to wherever it is meant to go?

I find a bit of planning helps me out. If nothing else, since I tend to write in short spurts as and when I get time to and in a race before deadlines, just to jot down a few bullet points at the start of a piece helps me to focus my thoughts. It helps to outline the angle of entry, the pathway through the theme, the sequence of events and drives me towards the conclusion, which, if all goes well, is a natural summing up of what went before in non-fiction and a tying of loose ends, a resolution, in fiction.

The extent of planning is influenced in part by how complex the piece you are trying to produce. A thoroughly researched piece of political history, a detailed biography of a famous figure, a complex crime thriller are each likely to need a thorough road map much more than a short story with a small cast of characters and a single theme plot. Then again, preferring to plan or not plan, and the extent of details in your plans can be influenced just as much by your personality as by the requirements of what you are trying to write.

I am, in collaboration with another writer, very slowly working my way through a non-fiction book. We began our work with some basic reading around the subject and then discussed an outline of what we wanted the book to be about. From this, we put together a basic plan. This has been reviewed a number of times, reworked and refocused as the research threw up information that we wanted to integrate, and identified irrelevant details that we decided to throw out. As we write, the plan is modified, but essentially it has helped us to focus and to organise what is a vast amount of information that we could have got lost in for years without ever typing a word.

For me, this approach works quite well with non-fiction. Even when I write short articles for magazines, a very basic plan helps me to organise my thinking. 

It works quite well with creative writing too. I remember from decades ago, our English teacher recommending writing a rough plan in pencil at the start of each of our answers before taking the plunge. It's the writing equivalent of warm up exercises before a rugby match to make sure you get the best performance from your muscles: in a writer's case, the mind muscle. What I found used to help the most, was a kind of release of creativity that seems to come when you force your thoughts down the nib of a pencil (you can do it electronically, but pencil works best for me). 

A rough plan doesn't restrict your work, it just helps to shape it. Many a time I've planned out a story to find that as I write, characters suddenly seem to take a life of their own, carve out their own path. Sometimes, it feels that I am writing what they are doing, rather than orchestrating their actions from my writing. It's a weird mental space that writers inhabit!

Which is where non-planning and writing on the wing comes in. Once the creative flow starts, writing seems to happen through you rather than by you. It's as if once you have found the "real" story - that mystical story that exists in the Platonic world of ideas rather then springing from the grey matter between your ears, that story that was just lurking in the ether waiting to be caught and fastened to paper (or translated into digital form) - the story simply materialises. So, I might be sounding a bit metaphysical here, but that's how it feels. 

What actually happens is that by writing freely, with only a vague suggestion about what you want to write, you release the creativity in your brain and it will create the story as you go along. It's quite a liberating way to write, a little exciting, and even a touch disturbing if you are one of those writers who likes complete control over their work.

Whether you plan your work first or not, whether you follow your plan or let yourself get carried along by the power of the story, all writing needs to be revised and polished so that it makes some kind of sense to the reader. Stories without meaning are not stories at all, just a collection of phrases. But revision is a whole other ball game. I'm off to plan a story in the hope I'll actually write one worth submitting to a competition or for publication somewhere. For what is the point of writing if no-one is going to be able to read and understand your work?

Gibraltar Writers

After a very slow summer as far as writing is concerned, characterised mainly by finding a way to avoiding queuing for hours at the border with Spain.  Did I say border?  It's beginning to feel more like our own Mediterranean Berlin Wall!  As I was saying, after a long, hot summer, I have managed to scrape the nib of a biro onto some paper again and clawed my way into second place in the Gibraltar Autumn Festival Poetry competition with a poem called "Nightwatch".  Second place to an excellent poem by Rebecca Faller, published in The Gibraltar Chronicle.  First verse of "Nightwatch" is printed below. One day, it will form part of an anthology of my poems, but first I have to sharpen up my pencil, fill up my fountain pen, and boot up my lap top and PRACTISE.

Because, if what they say is right, that generally you can expect to scribble out a million words of drivel before you write something worth publishing, I still have a way to go.  Not far, I hope, but still a fair way.  So practise is a must.

Which brings me to Gibraltar Writers.

Writing can be isolated and isolating.  You can only really write something worthwhile when on your own.  Not necessarily physically (above-mentioned poem having been written and honed while surrounded by loving but noisy family), but alone somewhere inside your head, in your own space and your own world that you create paragraph by paragraph.  And the more time you spend writing the less time you spend interacting with real people - social networking only goes a little way to bring you in touch with people, flesh and blood human beings with all their oddities and quirks.  And since books and stories are populated by people, writers just have to go out into the throngs even if only to glean ideas with which to draw their characters.

Gibraltar East Side (because it's different to the West)

And one way to feel a lot less isolated and much more supported and surrounded by others with the same interest in writing as you, is to join a writers group.  Gibraltar Writers meets monthly at the Sir John Mackintosh Hall, on the first Tuesday of each  month at 7.15.  It's a space and place in the month where we can put the lap top to sleep, leave the family to fend for itself and indulge in the company of others who simply can't resist the urge to write down their thoughts, weave wonderful tales, paint visions with words and want to share this with others.  We'll be sharing tips, ideas, testing out our own writing on each other, improving our craft by having others share their opinions on our work and generally supporting each other through the minefield of creating, writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.

Whoever you are, whatever age, whether English is or is not your first language, if you like to write, you need to come to Gibraltar Writers on 3rd December.  And if you are thinking about it but are unsure, email me for more info and so I can convince you to join us there!  jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk  or find me on Facebook, or Google+ or Twitter (Gibtalk).

Sir John Mackintosh Hall, Gibraltar

See you on 3rd Dec with notebook and pen, or tablet, or wax and stigil or whatever you prefer to use to write!