Au Revoir, Genève

The Schynige Platte: a nice spot
for some writing

For two and a half years, I have spent my days tidying stories in a turret. I have lived in a wood-panelled room – a land-locked ship’s cabin, I like to think – and I have watched the drifting of the clouds and the phases of the moon through the windows above my head. I have walked to a market each Sunday, or else taken a tiny orange train up a hillside to visit my cousin and his family. I have explored: cities, lakes, woods, summer mountains on foot, winter mountains on skis. I have become used to the unfamiliar, not just languages and cultures that aren’t my own, but the sound of church bells in the morning, the smell of cooking cheese or vin chaud in the street, the sight of little old men walking giant chess pieces around giant chessboards in the park… Reflecting on it all like this, I realise how wonderful and strange my time in Switzerland has been, almost like something from a story in itself. And now it is coming to an end - as all stories must.

I have always been driven by the desire to write – and the hope that writing could one day make up the bulk of my income. My Literary Consultant job here has been fantastic, but now I have the opportunity to put aside the editing and administration and concentrate on freelance ghostwriting and my own stories. And I know the place to do that is not in this charmed but expensive and faraway city, but in my beloved Edinburgh – my home, to which it is time to return.

View of Grand Rue, Geneva Old Town, the street on which I've lived and worked

Despite feeling fairly confident about this decision, it's breaking my heart a little, leaving Geneva while I'm having such a good time. I think perhaps it would help to dwell on the negative: the endless bureaucracy here, for example; the lack of sea; the customer service that borders on abuse. But I can’t. Switzerland, despite its reputation as a rather twee and snoozy little country, is an extraordinary place - not least for the fact its people once had the bright idea of dipping bread in booze and melted cheese. 

The mighty Matterhorn

It's also beautiful. I remember learning about  nature inspiring feelings of the sublime when studying Gothic literature at university, and I have felt that sensation again and again in Switzerland. When I hiked around the Schynige Platte above Interlaken last summer, or under the Matterhorn’s domineering shadow in early Autumn, the sights made my heart soar. I think I now understand why Julie Andrews went twirling off towards that mountainous horizon singing all sorts of silliness about musical hills – she just couldn’t keep it in. If you have never been to Switzerland, I urge you to visit at the first possible opportunity.

Of course, it’s people that really complete a place, and I have made some amazing friends out here. Geneva is a transient city, where most only stick around for a few years (or even months), so I’ve been very fortunate in this regard. Whether we’ve been indulging in thimble-sized glasses of wine in expensive bars, or slobbing out in front of TV shows in each other’s apartments; whether we’ve been lounging in the sunshine at the Perle du Lac park, or zooming down ski slopes in the biting cold - my friends and I have experienced this mad and magical place together. 

In many of these friends, and especially in my colleagues, I have also found kindred, creative spirits. We’ve swapped new story ideas, we’ve made colourful spreadsheets of competition deadlines together, we’ve read one another’s fiction – first drafts, fourth drafts, last drafts – and offered our comments. We’ve been there to share in each other’s successes – and commiserated in the face of a few, inevitable setbacks. We even made it official, forming The Pen Poppers writing group for regular practice, feedback and encouragement. As I have said before, writing is such a solitary occupation, I find it best to try and share as much of the process as possible. 

Skiing with my creative colleagues
(and two of my favourite Geneva people), Helen and Elodie

Which leads me onto my writing in Geneva. One of the reasons I want to pursue the next stage of my career in Edinburgh is that I have been a little starved of writing opportunities (as opposed to writing people) in Switzerland. But, in a way, being cut off from the UK literary scene has encouraged me to connect more in cyberspace. In the past few years, I have set up twitter and LinkedIn accounts, dedicated more time to Writer’s Block, completed Nanowrimo twice, joined two Reading Challenges, acquired Goodreads and Amazon author profiles. Now I think about it, I’m not sure I would have made my online presence quite so known, had I not felt far away.

I know I’ll return to Switzerland, both physically and in my writing (I’m already noticing a lot more mountain scenery popping up in my fiction), so I’m sure this is not the last time I’ll talk about my experiences here. But I wanted to get at least some of it down before I went, because I know it’ll seem different in a few weeks, and more different still a year or two down the line. So this is how it is right now, on the brink of leaving Geneva - and this is how I am: happy, grateful, inspired, better organised, more focused, more like a writer, even a little more worldly. And, conversely, because of all that, I'm also ready to go.

Jumping for joy at the top of Mont Salève

Stories For Homes, Homes for Stories

Every so often – though certainly not as often as I should - I go on a serious trawl of the internet for literary journals, magazines, websites and competitions, searching for places to send my short stories. A few months ago, on one such mission, I came across the website Stories for Homes, which was requesting submissions of short fiction for an anthology of the same name on the theme of ‘home’.

Immediately, one of my stories, Unsettled, popped to the forefront of my mind: it concerns a house, a community, and an outsider - themes I thought might sit well in the anthology. However, it is also a retelling of a famous fairy tale, and given that the book was being produced to raise funds for the homeless charity Shelter, I wondered whether the editors might want to stick to more realist(ic) stories to reflect the serious nature of the cause.  

Still it was worth a shot, I thought, so I sent off Unsettled with a rather sheepish this-might-not-be-quite-what-you’re-looking-for disclaimer, and was therefore doubly delighted when, shortly afterwards, I learned it had been accepted for the anthology.

(The story behind Stories for Homes – from its pitch to publication - is rather fascinating in itself, as described by Debi Alper on her website here.)

Given that the book was being put together for charity under significant time pressure, we writers were then paired up over cyberspace by the editors/organisers/superwomen, Sally Swingewood and Debi Alper, and asked to look over one another's work. Although editing is a large part of my day job, at the time of this request I was holed up in a French chateau with sporadic internet access (ghostwriting larks...) and so a little worried about how I was going to find the time/means to pull off a decent editing job.

Fortunately, I was paired with Isabel Costello, who I later discovered runs the excellent book blog On the Literary Sofa. Isabel’s wonderful story, Half of Everything, about a woman coming to terms with the breakdown of her marriage during hurricane Sandy (totally different to my fairy tale piece!) hardly needed any tweaking, so it was a very pleasant editing task indeed. And a useful learning experience for me too, because it's not often my work is edited by someone I don't know. I usually entrust it to a few writerly friends, but Isabel provided some really constructive and thoughtful feedback, which led me to look at my piece afresh and give it a good polish before its publication. 

I am very proud to have been involved in the Stories for Homes book, and in awe of the people who worked so hard to pull it all together. It's strange to think that I stumbled across its website when looking for a home for one of my stories. I couldn't have predicted that search would lead me to such an exciting project, one that will hopefully make a big difference to people in desperate need of a place to call their own.  
  

Stories for Homes promo by Imran Siddiq

Stories for Homes is available now in ebook form on Amazon for just £5 and I’m told there will be a paperback version coming soon. One hundred percent of the royalties goes straight to Shelter.

Collaborative Writing

When I was younger, I imagined writers to be Beatrix Potter figures, holed up in country cottages with animals crawling and hopping (though curiously never defecating) over their work. Throughout my teenage years, my ideal authorial figure became the café-bound JK Rowling (aside from my brief flirtation with Ewan McGregor’s absinthe-soaked scribbler from Moulin Rouge - be still my adolescent heart). But whether they reside in mansions or garden sheds, work with quills or Macs, most people’s image of a writer will have at least one thing in common: they are alone.

Ewan McGregor: making writers look
good since 2001

Obviously there are exceptions, especially in screenwriting, but I think it’s fair to say that most writers are solitary sorts. For many, this is one of the best aspects of the profession, and indeed I have often wondered whether I feel compelled to write because I am a huge control freak/megalomaniac, and it’s far easier to get made up people to do what you want than real ones. And of course, two people sitting in front of a computer/notebook/artfully-battered typewriter are always going to take about eight times longer to produce something because everything needs to be discussed (if I sound disparaging here, seriously - try it and get back to me).

So writing – and by that, I mean the actual typing out/inking down of the words - is mainly a solitary activity, agreed? But the thing is, everything around it - the writing process, if you will - really shouldn't be.

During my Creative Writing Masters in Edinburgh we had to attend a weekly workshop where we both presented our own work for feedback and provided feedback for others in the group. It seems strange to think back on it, two writers' groups down the line, but ahead of that first session back in 2007 I was terrified. Before then, although I hadn't been completely secretive about my work, I hadn't always been entirely willing to share it either. In fact, the whole idea of the workshop was so daunting, I even resubmitted the story I had used for my MSc application, figuring that if my tutors had let me on the course, it can't have been that bad.

Unsurprisingly, I quickly relaxed about it all and, over the course of the MSc, came to learn that giving and receiving feedback was not only very useful, it could even be enjoyable. Sharing the burden of a story is actually a huge relief, and trusted readers can offer a completely different perspective on a tale that has, until very recently, only existed in your head: This idea works, but needs expanding on. That minor character is really interesting - why not give her more to do? If you tone down the description here, it'll make the image more effective. And so on.

I'll save the debate on how useful doing a Masters in Creative Writing is for another day, but I don't think there's any doubt that the workshop experience was invaluable. It inspired me to start my Edinburgh writers' group, WOW (Writers on Wine), which threw booze into the mix, thus making the whole feedback process far easier - and more likely to descend into giggles. In turn, WOW's success prompted me to start my Geneva writers' group, which is currently in its fledgling stages...

So, in summary: writing alone in a garret without surfacing for company is all well and romantic (thanks, Ewan!) but I'm not sure how helpful it is, creatively. Perhaps it doesn't need to be through anything as official as a workshop, but I've found entrusting respected, writerly friends with my initial ideas, my first drafts, my eighth drafts (and having them trust me with their writing in return) is not only far more useful than doing it alone - it's far more fun too.

WOW: Lizzie, Cheryl, Hannah, Cat and me
(don't judge, it was our Christmas meeting)

Unbound

Stories come in all shapes and sizes. Ernest Hemingway famously penned a tale comprised of just six words:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

What has always struck (and moved) me about Hemingway’s six-worder is that it is potent precisely because of what is not said and what the reader is left to infer – in short, the old ‘show don’t tell’ chestnut. Going by this principle, I decided to pen my own six-word effort for a twitter competition. This was the result:

Zookeeper missing. Distraught lion loses appetite.

Hemingway it ain’t, but unbeknownst to me at the time, the above six words were to draw me into a far bigger story in which I – or more specifically, my name – was to play a rather large role. 

The twitter competition in question was organised by Scottish Book Trust (SBT) as part of  their ‘It Will Be All Write On The Night’ project. Described as ‘a storytelling experience with a difference,’ SBT had challenged three of their New Writers Award winners to pen a story in weekly instalments for the final night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF). In addition to this, each chapter was to be influenced by prompts from twitter and Facebook, such as book spine poetry or a favourite piece of artwork.

I admit to only vaguely following what was going on when I entered the competition (and if I haven’t explained it very well, there’s more info on it all here) but I was nevertheless thrilled when Cargo Publishing declared my story the winner, and thus the next prompt of the project. Well marvellous, I thought, eagerly anticipating how that week’s author, Kirstin Innes, would be slotting lions into the tale. Only, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. For when the next chapter appeared on SBT’s website, I discovered it wasn’t just my six words that were woven into the story, but my name too.  

I can’t really go into it too much without spoiling the story (which I really recommend reading, starting from the bottom of this page) suffice to say that what was emerging by the time we got to Kirstin’s Part Five was the tale of a rebel movement’s struggle against an oppressive regime – a rebel movement now named ‘the Amanda Block.’ 

He was as surprised as I was.

I have to confess: I panicked. Seeing my name like that was so strange, so unexpected, I didn’t know what to think. Fortunately, after a soothing conversation with SBT’s Writer Development Manager, Caitrin Armstrong, and a thorough reread of the work so far, I began to gain a bit of perspective. What was going on, I realised, was something rather special: a big, bold story was being created, not just by one author, but three; not just from one idea, but from multiple prompts and multiple medias. It was, in fact, exactly the kind of experimental and collaborative approach to storytelling that I’m keen on. And when I looked at it like that, I was keen to be a part of it too. 

“We have a few ideas for the night itself,” Caitrin explained to me. “We wanted to have posters with ‘the Amanda Block’ on them and – I’m not sure you’ll go for this – but we were thinking of putting it on badges too.”

Posters? Badges? I should point out at this juncture that Caitrin assured me my name would not be used against my will and it was my decision as to whether it be included at all. Going away to think about it, however, I found myself reflecting that this was the last night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival we were talking about, where an exciting narrative featuring my name was nearing completion. How could I not agree? I gave her the go-ahead, badges and all.

So to the night itself, which miraculously coincided with my summer visit to Edinburgh. ‘It Will Be All Write On The Night’ was to be EIBF’s last ‘Unbound’ event (if EIBF is, by day, a bespectacled, buttoned-up nerd, then Unbound is the moment it ruffles up its hair, throws its specs aside and orders a vodka or three to wash down all that literature). I had been told that, aside from getting up on stage and reading all of six words, I could sit back and enjoy the show. But that didn’t stop me from being a little apprehensive, especially as the section of the Spiegeltent in which I was sitting was dubbed 'the representatives of ‘the Amanda Block’'.

I needn’t have worried. Because despite the posters and the badges bearing my name - yep, there really were posters and badges - the evening was, of course, not about me. It was about the writers and it was about the story, which once more I really urge you to investigate (I have come to the conclusion it’s Margaret Atwood meets Cloud Atlas with a bit of The Hunger Games thrown in - and if that hasn’t made you want to read it, I don’t know what will). And it was about expanding that story too for, as a final challenge, Kirstin and her fellow New Writers, George Anderson and R. A. Martens, were asked to complete it that very night using prompt words from the audience (deliberately difficult words, it emerged: scunnered? Unicorn?) But they rose to the occasion magnificently and their fitting final chapter can be read here.

So, in the end, it was more than all right on the night. After a few gin and tonics, it seemed perfectly normal to me that tables and people were festooned with ‘the Amanda Block’ badges. Besides, by that point I was far more interested in the brilliant – if rather madcap – tale that somehow belonged, at least in part, to everyone there that night. The authors had triumphed, the challenge had paid off, and it was all so much fun – just as storytelling should be. 

Plus it’s not every day a rebel movement is named after you…

I got to keep one.