Lynne Rees

Hello Katie. I have no hesitation in saying 'a short story' but that's because I don't think I'm a natural 'long' story teller and struggled with writing my own novel, as short as it is. I'm full of admiration for people who can layer plotlines, explore a character's development through the years, and shift between points of view, and still make it all hang seamlessly together. One of my favourite novels is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas,although I had my doubts when I began to read it as to whether it was really a novel or a collection of short stories. But by the time I hit the middle of the book I was completely won over. It's a triumph. I don't know if there are any writers out there who would say the novel is 'easier' (but it's a good question to ask other featured writers) because of the amount of time you have to dedicate to a novel and that brings its own difficulties.

p.s. Michelle - love your little pussycat avatar. I have a new kitten here in France - Chica - all black and a cute little rascal.

Yes, it's great, isn't it! Sarah and I are delighted with the energy of the project again this year. And there are lots of new contributors too, as well as some familiar names. It's going to be hard to choose, but I've learned my lesson from last year and I'm reading them day by day and choosing my favourite. That way I won't get all goggle-eyed at the end of the month reading thousands and thousands of words!

Hi Michelle - I didn't start writing until I was 30, twenty years ago now. I'd never written as a kid or teenager, apart from a short-lived attempt at one of those 5 year diaries with a little gilt lock... do you remember them? I think I managed to get as far as January 10th one year with scintillating entries like 'We had sausages for dinner' before I abandoned it completely. I went to live in Florida in 1988 and I discovered Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones in a bookstore there and, taking her advice, I started writing for myself, just free-writing, not judging or editing at all. The whole process and committment to writing every day gave me a connection with myself that I'd never experienced before. I kept writing on my own - short stories - and had my first ever acceptance from The People's Friend, who paid me

Thank you, Poppy. I really appreciate your feedback. And if you ever feel like joining in at AppleHouse Poetry Workshop Online, or the new Your Messages project next month, then please don't hesitate. I forgot to mention in a previous post about Your Messages that last year we raised money for the charity Kids Co through the sales of the anthology, and we're hoping we can do the same this year too.

Thanks for mentioning this, Michelle. Your Messages was a writing project, devised to co-incide with the new edition of Messages, that Sarah and I ran online in November last year. Each day we posted a 300 word prompt from the book and anyone could respond with their own original 300 word piece, before 8am GMT the next morning. At the end of the month we chose a selection of the strongest pieces and these were published in an anthology, Your Messages, which was launched at The Poetry Cafe in London in February this year. We were stunned by the high quality of writing and by the enthusiasm of so many writers, some of whom responded every day of November, and by the support of so many of them at the launch - we had writers from Texas and Austria and from all over the UK too. I don't think we'd really forseen how successful the project could be though, because at the end of the month we found ourselves reading through the equivalent of two copies of War and Peace to make our selections! But it was very much worth the time and effort because we met up with a wonderful community of writers and stayed in touch... so much so that the demand was still there for a similar project this year. You can check on either of the following links for details (they both take you through to the same page), and it would be great if any BCF member would like to take part. It'll start on 1st November but there'll be a few postings beforehand to get the project's wheels oiled: www.yourmessages.org http://writeyourmessages.blogspot.com/

Sometimes I think that titles are the hardest part of writing - it's the first thing that readers respond to and can mean the difference between your work being read or not read - left on the shelf, or the page of a journal turned. As far as poems are concerned, the titles tend to arrive last, and I prefer simple titles that can have more than one meaning or, hopefully, seduce the reader into finding out more, e.g. 'White', 'Building', 'How We Cry'. The title for The Oven House came from a tiny holiday cottage I stayed in while I was working on the very early stages of the MSS. It had once been the communal 'bakehouse' for the village and the themes and ideas of the novel all seemed to be metaphorically contained in that single image: heat, compression, containment. The title for my poetry collection. Learning How to Fall, comes from one of the poems, 'Falling' and that seems to be quite a common thing for poets to do. And the book is arranged in three sections that explore ideas of 1. falling from grace, or from the expectations of other people, 2. falling in and out of love, and 3. allowing yourself to 'fall' (or lose control) in order to rise higher, or grow. These ideas aren't explicitly stated in the collection though. Messages was easy as the project was constructed around sending email messages to one another. But once again, the word 'message' can be interpreted in different ways too. Character names can be tricky. Names can carry such strong references and can influence the reader. The main character in The Oven House doesn't have a name - only a nickname that her husband uses - and that was a deliberate choice as she does lose herself, loses touch with who she is/was, or who she thought she was. I decided on 'David' and 'Matthew' for the men because they felt rather quiet, not too intrusive, as I wanted the book to be her story, her journey.

Hi there - I've read and signed books in different parts of Wales and England, did a short poetry tour of Portugal with my welsh publisher, Parthian, and took part in a writer's exchange between England, France, Belgium and Ireland in 2005/6 which was wonderful. There were 8 writers (2 from each country) and the visits to each country included official receptions, readings, school visits and cultural events. Reading my work in front of a peat fire in a thatched barn in Ireland is something I'll always remember. As to where I'd love to visit/promote my books... hmmmm, New York and San Francisco come to mind because of the magical literary history associated with both cities... though because I've just moved to France (Antibes) I'd like to develop contacts with some french writers, possibly work on a bilingual project together and have some kind of event to celebrate that. I need to settle in more here first, and then I can focus on making that a reality. Interesting question - thanks for making me concretise an idea.

Sorry, Michelle, that's classified information! Because Sarah and I felt that Messages was more than just a sum of its individual pieces, that we were both, in a sense, responsible for each piece, we decided that we wouldn't tell anyone who wrote what, who started, if either of us missed a turn etc, and that the whole book would be identified as written by Lynne Rees & Sarah Salway. I think we both felt that we'd explored territory that we wouldn't have done without the other one's stimulus so it felt important not to publicly claim individual ownership of the pieces. We don't even necessarily present our own pieces at readings either... and it's been rather fun when people try and guess who did write what. Of course, I could say that all the ones with swear words are Sarah's...

With poetry, at least in the UK, it seems essential to get a reasonable body of work published in some reputable journals before a publisher will take a look at a MSS. I think that shows a committment to the contemporary poetry scene too. It is much easier to get work published online, though it's probably wise to be a little selective about the sites. Re 'the quote' thing - I've just been clicking on the 'Quote' box that appears at the bottom of the post I'm responding to, and that seems to work!

I'd read about a collaboration between some Australian writers who were using email and I thought I'd like to be involved in something similar, so at a writing group I'd only just joined I mentioned it to the other 4 women but it was only Sarah who immediately said 'Yes! I'd love to do that.' And I knew, with that kind of immediate enthusiasm, I'd found the ideal writing partner. We then agreed the 300 words length between us - not too long for me, as principally a poet, and not too short for her, as principally a prose writer at that time. And 300 pieces seemed a nice tidy number to aim for. We also had another constraint - we had to respond to each other within 3 days or we'd lose our turn. I hope all that doesn't make us sound rather obsessive/compulsive! But, in fact, these constraints gave us tremendous freedom: the boundaries were set but the playing field was wide open as far as form and content.

Hello Katie - hmmm... difficult question because I have attachments to each book for different reasons. The Oven House was my first book and I can remember the feeling when I opened the box of author's copies and held one in my hand for the first time - overwhelmed, proud to bursting, frightened... a mixture of every emotion! The photos of the book launch show me grinning from ear to ear in every shot though so I think 'bliss' was the over-riding one! Although relief also, because I don't feel I'm a natural long-story teller and I really struggled with expanding the plot and sub-plot of The Oven House, so to have completed a novel, albeit a short one, and to see it published, felt like a real achievement. Learning How to Fall was my second book, and because it was through poetry that I found a deep connection to writing, and to myself, this was very special. The poems in there were written over 10 years so they represent a long period of my life - events, changes, people. I still feel very close to a lot of poems in the book, and pleased that at readings people have come up to me and said, 'I don't usually like poetry, but I could understand yours and enjoyed it'. That's one of the best responses I can ever hope for to anything I've written. And Messages. What a phenomenal experience that was, writing it and watching it develop into a book. It was originally a private writing project between me and Sarah Salway - bouncing 300 word emails off each other to stimulate creativity and keep in touch with the joy of writing - but within a few weeks we both felt the energy that was building, how we were both so engaged and excited by what we were doing, what we were discovering about ourselves as writers. When we completed the project - 300 pieces of 300 words - we gave a couple of conference papers on collaboration and the writer's voice and then subsequently the book was published. And from what we've heard, readers seem to enjoy the book as much as we enjoyed writing it. My writing now has taken a different turn. I'm much more involved with writing on the internet, and I'm an editor at Simply Haiku - www.simplyhaiku.com - a journal that celebrates the writing of japanese forms in english, one of which - the haibun - is my latest obsession. The form combines prose and poetry (haiku) and I'm currently using it to write a journal of my new life here in Antibes, and two excerpts can be read at: http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/05/lynne-rees-across-pond.html http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/08/lynne-rees-across-pond.html All of which doesn't answer your question, does it?!!

Hello - I can't really answer as far as 'world-wide' goes, but there are a few major publishing houses in the UK that publish poetry - Faber being one of them, though I imagine that their amazing back list allows them to publish books that don't actually make any money! There are some specialised poetry publishers - Bloodaxe among them - and lots of smaller presses who have a regular output of poetry books, some of which get Arts Council money, but that seems to be diminishing. I imagine in most cases that the publishing is a labour of love rather than a money spinner, and maybe poetry will always be the 'poor cousin' in the literary world because there just isn't the reading market for the books. I was just going to write it is difficult to get a collection published, but actually, it's difficult to get any MSS accepted and published, isn't it? As far as the future is concerned... I think every now and then a book of poetry, or a poem, or a poet, will come along and encourage a larger general readership, but for the most part, poetry will probably remain less popular. Maybe it asks more from a reader than prose does? A different kind of attention, approach. A different way of reading? That's definitely something I address when I teach poetry.

Good morning. I've had my own writing space for some time now - before that, for years, I shifted a desk around different corners of the house and/or had to put everything away at the end of a writing session. In 1996 my partner built me a 'writing house' in the garden as a present when I finished my MA, though also, I suspect, because I came home from B&Q armed with shed brochures and he was horrified at my choices! I christened the building 'The Pen' and that's where I wrote The Oven House and started on Messages with Sarah Salway. When we moved. I had my own writing room, again, but in the house, and that was big enough to run small creative writing seminars in too. Now I've re-located to France, I have a wonderful study that looks out on palm trees. Yes, palm trees! I can hardly believe it myself... It does feel like a luxury, having a dedicated place to write in, and I do believe that if we really want to write we'll do it anywhere. But Virginia Woolf was right about 'a room of one's own'. It's as if the place gathers atmosphere through the concentration that takes place there. As far as times to write go ... not really... though I'm not an early morning person. If I'm thoroughly involved in a project I can write at anytime, and lose track of the hours completely.