At the moment Sarah Salway over at Mslexia is publishing a collection of workshops about how writers ‘steal’ their stories from the world around them. The first workshop looked at Stories from Strangers. The second looks at Family Stories by doing the following exercise:

• If you can’t think of a family story, interview family members about their childhood until something jumps out at you. Then research what was going on in the wider world at the time: What were the big news stories? What music was being played? What people wearing, reading, eating, talking about? Try to make connections between the family story and the bigger world picture (change the date or location if necessary). Looking at your family’s personal story in the context of the larger public story will help you see it in a different way.
• Try starting with: ’It was the year that … (public event); it was also the year that …. (private family event)’ For example: ‘It was the year that a bomb went off in Harrods; it was also the year that my mother first met Mr Richards.’ Keep swapping over between public and private and see where it takes you. This is your first draft. Keep telling yourself that no one will see it…

The exercise is only a small part of the workshop. Family Stories also includes a very interesting discussion about the difficulty of using family stories. This is mostly due to family reaction to your tale and how managing this reaction to work best for your story.

Sarah Salway is the author of three novels, and a collection of short stories.

Where do we get our ideas from? One suggest is that they just come to us magically. Sarah Salway suggests writers Steal Stories during their every day experience or to quote TS Eliot, “Mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal”.

Of course she doesn’t suggest out right theft, rather you use a story you have heard from someone else as inspiration. Sarah is presently offering a series of three workshops on the subject which the first one is called Stories About Strangers.

• Take a story you have overheard or been told, and strip it back to the bare events, e.g. Artist can’t sell paintings, goes door to door, pet portraits, no-one has pets, paints furniture instead.
• Now think what it is about this story that interests you. Not what is generally interesting, but what interests you. This will be your theme. In my case, it was what happens when inanimate objects replace a living breathing love. Another writer might riff about wild animals in suburbia, or how much luck is involved in being discovered as an artist. You could brainstorm several themes, then pick one and rewrite the story, following your theme.
• Try extending the narrative further than your original list of events. What happened next? Who else is in the story? Maybe start with an image that sums up your theme.

For her article for Mslexia, Sarah talks in a lot more details about Stealing Stories and uses examples from her own work and that of Raymond Carver. Sarah Salway is the author of three novels, and a collection of short stories.

For our second meeting of 2012 saw another great turn out with nine people turning up. This was probably down to the fact that poet Jane McKie came along to present a short workshop focusing on the words and metaphors people use in their work (a full post on her workshop will be posted shortly!) We also saw the arrival of two new members Bill and Ionwen.

The news from tonight’s meeting was:

• On Thursday night Ironstone are having a Burn’s Nicht @ Waterstones to celebrate Burns Night that is on Wednesday.
• Also Quill are involved in a Burn’s Night Ceilidh on Saturday night (28/01/2012). Tickets are £25.
• There was a quick reminder that the Reader’s Digest 100 short story competition is closing on the 31st of January.
• Mslexia have just opened a new short story competition which closes on the 18th of March.
• Finally, Elspeth Murray is doing a workshop to celebrate Livingston’s 50th birthday on the 24th of March.

Sediment & Ancestor/Descendant – two poems from Barbara. The first was about a cup of tea with the second one being about family resemblances.

For Audrey – a short story by Anne. On a dark and stormy night a group of Bohemian women sit around the fire drinking wine and discuss a local ghost story.

Powerful – an autobiographical poem by Mary about her Dad.

Kibera - a poem from Ionwen about the main shanty town in Nairobi, Kenya.

Leopard Print High Heels – two short 100 words short stories about the topic of prostitution told from two different perspectives.

Mslexia – the women’s writing magazine – have launched their 2012 short story competition. Your story can be up to 2,200 words in length and can be on any subject. Only women can enter this competition sadly. The head judge this year is Tessa Hadley.

Tessa has written four novels and a couple of short story collections. She says “There’s no recipe for a good short story – in fact, they need to be unexpected, surprising. The most familiar material can be surprising if it’s seen freshly.”

The prizes are as follows:

• 1st Prize: £2,000 plus a week’s writing retreat at Chawton House Library* and a day with a Virago editor**
• 2nd Prize: £500, 3rd Prize: £250
• Three other finalists win £100 each.

All winning stories will be published in issue 54 of Mslexia.

CLOSING DATE: 19 March 2012

Please make sure you read the competition rules thoroughly before entering.

* The Chawton House Library (CHL) retreat is accommodation only: dates to be agreed between CHL and the competition winner.

** The day with a Virago editor: date to be agreed between Virago and the competition winner.

Both of these additional prizes are optional. The winner is responsible for any other expenses involved with attending the CHL retreat and the day with the Virago editor, i.e., travel, food etc. The prizes must be taken by 31 May 2013.

A while back Mslexia, the magazine for women who write, gave out some writing advice alongside one of their competitions. The advice was called “Give Your Story A Facelift” and here are all six points in full:

1. Have you started too early? Or ended too late? - There is no space in a short story for a long preamble. The reader needs to feel as though they’ve arrived slightly late at theatre: the curtain’s up and the characters are already talking to one another. If your reader has to play a bit of catch up they’ll feel more involved in the action.
2. Have you chosen a single point of view? – The most basic mistake is to tell the story from more than one characters’ point of view. If you do this, you lose focus and dissipate empathy every time you shift perspective. One way to keep your point of view is to rewrite the story in first person. This will force you to stay with your protagonist. You can always change back to third person afterwards, when you have achieved the focus you need. Writing in first person should also help you to clarify and distil the motivation of your main character. Ask yourself why they feel as they do, why they are acting in this way, and your story will gain shape and depth as well as focus.
3. Is your main character sympathetic enough? – You need to make sure that your reader really cares what happens to your protagonist. A simple way of achieving this is to give your protagonist a single, strong, clear and concrete want or need. However, unattractive or immoral your character is, if you give them a really deep desire for something, your reader can’t help rooting for them. Another way to your main character more sympathetic is to endow them with something you value yourself. This will force you to empathise with your protagonist and hopefully you’ll be able to communicate this to your reader.
4. Have you made it too complicated? – Short stories are all about focus and significance. There’s simply no space for needless complexity. You need to concentrate on creating one main effect and cut out anything that distracts from that effect. That means no flashbacks, no subplots, no multiple viewpoints etc. Other questions to ask yourself are: are there too many characters? Too many moods?
5. Is your story rather monotonous? – You can add variety and dramatic interest by dividing your story up into scenes as if it was a play. Three scenes are ideal: a beginning, a middle and an end. Make each scene different in some fundamental way from the others by changing the setting, the characters involved etc. Writing in scenes will also encourage you to use dialogue which will add further variety to your story. Another way to create variety is to vary the length of your sentences and paragraphs.
6. Have you conveyed a sense of place? – You can inject colour and atmosphere into your story by setting it somewhere definite and then interspersing fragments of description throughout the text. Concentrate on the opening paragraphs to encourage the reader to form an early image. There’s no room in a short story for extended description, but you can create a surprisingly vivid sense of place with a few judicious phrases.

Mslexia – a writing magazine for women – have launched their poetry competition for 2011.  Poems can be in any style, length and subject. The competition will be judged by Jo Shapcott.

1st Prize: £2000 plus a week at the idyllic poets’ retreat of Cove Park and a mentoring afternoon with the editor of premier poetry magazine, Poetry Review.

2nd Prize: £400

3rd Prize: £200

20 other finalists will receive £25 each and, along with all prize winner, will be published in issue 51 of Mslexia, published in October 2011.

The entry fee is £7 for up to three poems.

CLOSING DATE: 18 JULY 2011

Please check the Competition Web Page for Competition Rules and the FAQs and to enter the competition.