After her guest slot on BBC Radio Bristol last Saturday (two days left to catch up here), Shirley is fast becoming a local celebrity, but she has found time to tell us some of her writing secrets in today’s post. What are you working on now? Poetry, almost exclusively. I’ve become fascinated with…
Our group has been tagged by Nina on her Kitchen Table Writers blog (great news on the Fish Prize, Nina!) to answer questions about our writing process. So we’re going to take turns to reveal at least some of our writing secrets. First up is Gail. What am I working on now? My novel-in-the-writing is about a remote…
Ali Bacon reviews a new short story collection I sometimes think short story collections are like boxes of chocolates. I always enjoy the first couple but I’m quickly sated and often end up by not getting to the end (well okay that rarely happens with chocolates, but you get the picture!) I think it’s particularly true…
Jean Burnett wonders if she can survive the onslaught of technology. “But how can I live here without my books?” Wrote Balthazar Bonifacius Rhodiginus in 1656. ” I really seem to myself crippled and only half myself.” Any book lover will empathize with poor Balthazar. I vividly recall my feelings of woe when my home…
On Friday there’s a chance to celebrate Bristol’s Tbilisi connection and hear from Meg Clothier, journalist and author of The Girl King, a novel about Queen Tamar of Georgia. Meg will be at Foyles on Friday March 7th (6pm start) discussing her book with our own Jean Burnett who is a long-time member of the Bristol…
It has been a busy few months since our launch in October with Bristol Women Writers members taking parts in lots of events around the Bristol area as well as knuckling down to get on with our own writing projects. (Yes, we write stuff too!) But now we’re ready to ‘go public’ again with a…
This week we’re delighted to welcome our first ever guest blogger, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt. We invited her because three of us, Gail, Shirley and Ali, all read her debut novel While No One Was Watching and all absolutely loved it. The book (Ali’s review is here) tells the story of what else might have happened in…
Nina Milton continues with her short story advice. There is only one rule that can never be broken, and that is length. A short story has to be short. But how short? Are there minimum or maximum word counts that short fiction must sit between?: The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms says that a short…
Nina continues her exploration of the short story craft. In my last blog, I looked at how the short story works today and wondered at its level of popularity. I do sometimes worry that the only people who read the short story are people write, or want to write short stories. Even worse, some people…
By Shirley Wright My romantic streak has received a series of blows to the head recently. Last month I read A Passionate Sisterhood (Virago) by biographer and friend Kathleen Jones, and now I have to re-evaluate my life-long passion for poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge because they were, essentially, male chauvinist pigs. It’s a great…