Tag: Publishing

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Trying My Hand at a Chapbook

In the world of writing, there are all sorts of routes to publication for poetry and short stories, but they divide roughly into two main types.

The first is a competition format. This usually requires payment of an entry fee, which goes towards a cash prize for the winner – and sometimes runners-up – along with publication. I don’t normally enter these. Among other reasons, the cost is often excessive and the rules of entry tend to be complex and sometimes contradictory.

I much prefer the second format: an open call from a publisher. This is typically free and simple to enter, although the trade-off is a lesser payment, if any is offered at all. Here, the glory lies largely in publication and a contributor’s copy.

That said, the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize recently caught my attention. In this competition, the publisher wants poetry chapbook submissions of between 15 and 30 pages. Three winners, anonymously judged by the editors, will receive $5,000 and 500 copies of the book.

I’ve wanted to compile a collection for some time now, so this seemed the ideal opportunity. Additionally, unpublished individual poems from the manuscripts may also be offered standard publication in Rattle.

I’d already settled on a theme of self-confidence and romantic relationships, so I looked through the 200 folders in my poetry archive, hoping to find 12 suitable pieces. I found 11, and I wanted them to flow by mood, almost telling a story. Yet they wouldn’t fall into a suitable order no matter how they were arranged.

As the deadline was closing in, a solution eventually presented itself. I added a 12th poem that wasn’t on the same theme but could be read as such with some canny placement. I then wrote a 13th piece lifting some elements from that poem but taking them in a different direction, and these two act as bookends for the chapbook.

The other problem happened around the middle of the collection, where two poems with contrasting moods disrupted the flow. I separated them by writing a very short 14th piece, just two lines long, but it worked to calm the waters.

The winners will be announced in mid-April, so I’ll be sure not to submit the same poems anywhere else until then. In the likely event that my work isn’t accepted, I still have a chapbook to submit elsewhere or perhaps even to publish myself.

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Tackling War & Peace

Around 2015, I bought a copy of the Leo Tolstoy novel War & Peace. I say ‘novel’, but it actually comprises four volumes, telling the story of the French invasion of Russia through the eyes of four fictional families.

The book is noted for its length, but all the chapters are short enough that you can read one or two before bed; there are just a lot of chapters. That also doesn’t mean the story has been stretched out longer than it needs to be. Tolstoy has enough plot points to justify the word count.

I recently found the book again, with the bookmark still around the halfway point where I left it. I’d fallen out of the habit of reading it, and I’d really like to restart it.

My edition has character biographies at the start, but I made a decision early on that I wouldn’t try too hard to keep up with the individual characters and instead just enjoy the story.

I think my best tactic for diving back in is to devote a full day or weekend to making progress. Meanwhile, the book is now at least in a prominent place so it won’t slip my mind.2024-05-21 Fractal

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Looking Out for Each Other

One of the best pieces for anyone looking to be published is to fully read the submission guidelines for any publisher you wish to contact.

It came to my attention late last week that Auroras & Blossoms is soliciting submissions with conditions that many writers and editors consider unfair and unorthodox. You can read some reactions to these guidelines online and find links to the publisher’s website.

For someone like me who has made hundreds of submissions to many publishers, I can immediately see what’s wrong. For instance, it’s highly uncommon for a publisher to withhold royalties unless the writer makes a donation. For a beginner writer who hasn’t yet developed that frame of reference, it’s easy to be caught out.

Fortunately, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is also worried about this problem. They run a blog called Writer Beware that’s geared towards any author, regardless of genre, highlighting the latest scams, impersonations and general shadiness. Unbelievably, this has been online since 1998.

Shortly before posting this entry, I discussed the blog with a pal. She not only already knew about the Writer Beware blog, but told me she’d brought Christina Kaye to their attention after a bad experience. Since the original post in November 2021, many other writers and industry professionals have added their voices, with a couple of comments even dating from last week.

While the problem of dodgy publishers isn’t new and isn’t going away any time soon, there are at least some in the industry who have your back.

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Using the Shavian Alphabet for Scots

Over the last week, an alternative rendering of English has come to my attention: the Shavian alphabet.

The name is derived from the last name of George Bernard Shaw, who disliked silent letters and non-phonetic spellings, and argued that the existing alphabet is insufficient to represent its sounds. However, he had little to do with its creation as it was developed more than a decade after he died in 1950.

Much more detail is available on a dedicated website run by one of its proponents. In simple terms, its main purpose is to eliminate ambiguous spellings by creating just one symbol for each possible sound actually used in English. For example, the current alphabet reserves just five letters for vowels as written, whereas there are around 20 vowel sounds. The letters of Shavian are more akin to Arabic than Latin.

This blog has taken longer to research than I initially imagined it would. However, no source seems to have addressed what I think is an obvious gap. The variant of English spoken in Scotland shares a similar problem with standard English in that the letters don’t necessarily match the sounds, with the extra issue that more words have more than one spelling, depending on how the speaker pronounces it.

On top of that is an additional guttural sound, represented by ch in words such as loch or Auchterhouse. This is not unique to Scotland, also appearing in languages such as Spanish and German.

In my view, adding a representation for that sound would go some way towards making it suitable for Scots speakers. The International Phonetic Alphabet devotes the letter x to it, which is not already used in Shavian, but also can’t be drawn with one stroke like the rest of its characters.

As it stands, it’s unlikely we’ll see any widespread use of the Shavian alphabet in our lifetimes. But who knows what practical applications might be found for it in the future?

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Using the Correct Template

Every month, I attend a poetry circle where each member writes a piece to be discussed at the next meeting.

When I submit work, I generally place it on the same template, in Courier New font, leaving room at the top for my name, address and line count. This month, I decided to deviate from the format.

I used the confrontation between Craig Phillips and Nick Bateman in Series 1 of Big Brother as inspiration for the poem in question. As such, the piece needed to be laid out in a way that suggested a relentless pace.

The most obvious step was to write the text in a column with no more than four words per line. I then changed the typeface. Some experimentation found Bahnschrift SemiBold Condensed to be most suitable, as it’s narrow but still chunky enough to read comfortably. I don’t particularly like centred justification as it’s more difficult for the eye to follow it down. As a compromise, I adjusted the left-hand indent to around 85mm from the edge of the page, placing the text roughly down the centre line.

The two templates above are merely examples. There are countless variations available online, each with their own benefits and pitfalls. The most important factor is to decide which one is suitable for your purposes.

When sending work to a publisher, this will be dictated by the submission guidelines. Yes, these can be annoying to follow, but a consistent format ensures the editors know exactly where to look. So pick your template wisely.

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A Short Piece About Short Pieces

Ten years ago next month, I joined my first writing class with the author Zoe Venditozzi.

In each lesson, she would give us a prompt, which might comprise a sentence, a few words or even a photograph. We’d then have five or ten minutes to write a paragraph or a passage inspired by it, sometimes with extra restrictions like using a particular viewpoint or writing a certain number of words. Many actors take improv classes to hone their skills, and this was the writers’ equivalent.

Since then, I’ve built up a considerable volume of short pieces, many of which have been revised over the years, but nothing that forms a larger cohesive work on a single theme.

Some time ago, I wanted to change this, and add some longer-form pieces to my archives. These turned into stage plays: one is ready to go, the other needs to be redrafted. I also have in mind a radio play that is mapped out but needs to be written.

Now, I’m ready to go back and write shorter pieces. I’m in a poetry monthly group that keeps me focussed on producing work for the next meeting, and I wrote another original poem for the purposes of performing to a virtual audience yesterday.

Along with this, I also need to return to the habit of responding to publishers’ requests for pieces. I used to aim to send an average of one a week, and that still seems like a manageable target.

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Lots of Words, Little Payoff

A long time ago on this blog, we explored what to look out for when submitting your work. I’d never had a particularly bad experience until recently.

But first, let me take you back 2½ years. I’d entered a short piece to be included in a charity anthology, along with a number of local writers. The book would then be sold to raise funds for the cause.

The process was long and slow. Months after my submission was accepted, I remember going to one meeting, which I found to be an unstructured and unproductive discussion about the form this book should take. As such, I didn’t attend another meeting, although I’d cut the committee a little slack because it was clear they were learning as they went along.

We then received sporadic updates about its progress, and just over a week ago, we heard confirmation that the book was finally ready. All we had to do was send our postal addresses to receive a contributor’s copy.

At this point, it transpired that the contributors would not receive complimentary or even reduced-price copies. This came as news to us as much as it did to the writer who had been liaising with the charity committee. We were instead invited to buy a copy for £19.99.

It’s considered bad form in the publishing world to charge contributors to see their own work in print. Some presses do operate like this, using a business model called vanity publishing, but that’s looked down upon in the industry, even by self-publishers. In this case, I’m satisfied it wasn’t the committee’s intention to act like a vanity publisher, but a case of not understanding the conventions of publishing.

None of the contributors want it to reflect badly on the charity or its purpose; indeed, that’s why we supported it with our words. Nonetheless, a number of us feel shortchanged. If we had been advised at the start we would be expected to buy a copy, we would have at least made an informed choice. Even for those who might choose to buy this volume, it’s currently only available in person and on a certain day of the week, which further restricts its availability.

The contributors have now opened discussions with the committee in the hope that a deal or a compromise can be reached.

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Rejected, but not Neglected

I’ve been invited to appear on a new podcast called Story Circle Jerk. It was started by my pal Kai Durkin to showcase short stories and music, either self-written or from others. We’ll be recording our episode at the end of the month, giving me a deadline to prepare material.

One part of my appearance will be an interview about my open-mike evenings. I’ll have to do some preparation for this, so I cover the all main points without overloading the listeners with information.

The other part will involve me reading one of my own short stories. The one I immediately reached for was a piece called Him, in which the narrator talks about seeing his life replayed through his own eyes after his death. I wrote this in 2014, with its most recent revision dated 2018.

Between these dates, the story was rejected by six different publishers. However, I’ve also read it to an audience on a number of occasions during that time; I deliver it in a slow and stark tone, inspired by Salman Rushdie reading Concerning The Bodyguard by Donald Barthleme. As such, it seems to work better on stage than on the page so I still have faith in it.

The story will need to be revised a little. The way I start the process is by reading it out loud, not to an audience, but to myself. If it sounds excessively wordy, or if I find myself unable to follow a plot point, it needs to be revised. This particular piece, however, shouldn’t need too much changing for Story Circle Jerk.

Another podcast I can recommend is The Beans Podcast, run by three friends. Be advised that it’s not specifically about writing, but covers many topics, from advice columns to caffeine to nuclear bombs.

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The Middle of the Road

It can be hard to believe that that even well-known writers might only be one piece of work away from losing popularity.

Experience helps a lot, from knowing your particular audience to being aware of wider trends – not to mention fads – in contemporary tastes. However, there is no telling for sure how the public will react to the next offering.

A good way to look at this phenomenon is to consider the winners of the Booker prize. Here’s a list from 1969 to 2014, in reverse chronological order.

Only a few of these have become household names, such as William Golding, Salman Rushdie, and double winner Hilary Mantel. But mention Aravind Adiga, JM Coetzee or even the first winner Bernice Rubens, and it’s likely you’ll need to give a little more context about who they are. That doesn’t mean they aren’t popular writers among their fans, merely that their work hasn’t caught on with the public the same way as their prized novels.

But who needs to be an outright success as an author? There is a term in publishing known as the midlist.

These are books from authors that don’t shift in great numbers, but do sell well enough to justify remaining in print. By its very nature, there are no great examples of midlist authors, because most of a publisher’s roster is likely to fall into this category. In fact, remove the handful of high earners and everyone else probably fits there.

This structure seems to be particularly true in non-fiction. Friends who have told me anecdotally that writing articles can bring in a steady enough income to justify their efforts.

So even if your next project doesn’t catch on as you expected, give it a little time and see whether it fits within the midlist.

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Back Six Years

I don’t often post my work online, as publishers often consider it to be previously published. This week, however, I wanted to devote an entry to something that’s already in the public domain.

In 2013, my first short story was included in an anthology by The Fiction Desk. This was before I began to write poetry. Even reading this back six years later, I’m still pleased with how it turned out. Below is the full text.

A Big Leap

By Gavin Cameron

I don’t know exactly how small you are, I think I might be about three thousand times bigger than you. It must be really horrible being your size. When you jump through the grass it must be like going through a forest, and the nettles must sting you if you’re not careful. The sky probably looks even further away to you. Do you have a bedroom? You could have a glass of milk and an afternoon nap when you get tired.

You’d probably like to be a bit bigger. If you were the same size as me, you’d be able to run over the grass and go a lot further. You could play football, or ride a bike, or we could even get you some clothes, maybe a T-shirt and some jeans and a pair of new trainers and a hat if you wanted one. Can you swim? A puddle must seem like a swimming pool to you, but the leisure centre probably wouldn’t let you in, even if you were my size. And I know Mum wouldn’t let you sit at the table because she hates creepy crawly things so you might have to get your own dinner.

I don’t know what I’d call you if you were a girl. I’d call you Graham if you were a boy so you’d be Graham the grasshopper. I’d get a collar with your name on it like a dog and tell everyone you were mine.

If you were the size of an elephant, I could ride you. We’d go down to the shops for sweets and we could patrol the library and tell noisy people they had to be quiet or we would throw them out. On a Saturday, we’d go out for the whole day and go over the hills and see people in other countries and they would give us little wooden things to take home with us, but we’d still stop for sweets on the way back. Maybe you’d even be able to fly and when it got dark, you could take us all the way up to the moon, and we could play there for a bit, then land back in our back garden, but you’d have to be really quiet because Mr Parker next door doesn’t like noise. I think you’d like to be me but I don’t think I’d like to be you. You’re just an ornament so you can’t move unless we move you but I can move anywhere I like. Oh well, at least you’ll be here later. I’ll come and talk to you again after dinner.