Things I Should've Known Years Ago...

I've just had a long Eureka moment, lasting for several days.  It's rather embarrassing actually because I've found out something I should've known ages ago.

I've been subbing for about two years and I've been moderately successful, using Duotrope to find ezines to sub to, largely American ones, which take stories featuring very American subject-matter.  I know several British writers who write very specifically for this market, even using Webster spellings.  No one is a bigger fan of Duotrope than I am, but it does tend to represent what American writers want to write - scifi, fantasy, zombies, vampires. 

At the same time... well, over the last few months... I've become a bit of a writing mag junkie ('Writers Forum', 'Mslexia', 'Writers Monthly', 'Leaf Books' although I was just reading the articles - until the last few days.   Dear Reader (if there is one), I have come to love the classifieds at the end, you know, the ones where they list all the competitions.  They're all British and most of them are open genre, so I've been whacking my British-based mainstream stories in there.  It may be that they too favour scifi and fantasy etc and I'm going to be terribly disappointed, but they're not saying so.

SUBBING THE OLD FASHIONED WAY

I normally sub stories electronically.  In fact, I've got to the point where, if I see a zine will only accept 'postal subs', I move on.  But sometimes you have to.  For womag, for instance.

The first problem is the printer.  At home I have a 'networked' printer, which purrs like a contented cat when my husband clicks 'print', but will only cooperate for me if I climb the stairs with my laptop and plug in the usb cable.  As Sunday night was somewhat fraught and me exhausted, I couldn't be bothered.  I backed up the story on my hard drive and printed it at work, which meant standing around the shared printer in a very guilty manner while it printed so as to avoid my colleagues' possible questions.

Sunday night having been, as I mentioned, fraught, I forgot the envelopes.  Never mind, I thought; I'll pick some up at the Post Office. I set off for my lunch time walk, carrying the story in a plastic polypocket inside a Body Shop carrier bag. I even remembered the paper clip which all womags demand.

Ten minutes later, I arrived at the main Post Office in the town where I work.  I tried to ignore the Communist era queue snaking around the shop and the robotic announcements - 'Checkout Number Six, please'.  I wandered around the wall displays of padded envelopes, old fashioned brown wrapping paper, sturdy cardboard boxes, bubble wrap... everything but normal envelopes.  After pacing around like a lost soul for several minutes, I found someone to ask.  "Oh no," she said.  "We've only got what you can see there.  We're reorganising our displays."  Post Office?  No envelopes?  Use it or lose it?  Right!

Five minutes walk to W H Smith's, who did sell envelopes, stand in their lunchtime queue, then five minutes back to the Post Office.  Time was running out now, and, not having time for the long and winding line, I used the automated facility instead.  And, dear reader, it worked, first time, weighing my package and discharging the correct stamps.  Hurray!

I did a final check: typescript, SAE, paperclip...  Where was that paper clip?  I did put one inside the polypocket.  Really.  Honestly.  I turned the polypocket upside down and even the Body Shop bag, but it wasn't there now.  And you've guessed it!   The Post Office didn't appear to sell paper clips.

I began to trudge back to work, out of the main shopping area, past the theatre and the pub, and on to the walkway across the main road.  And there, dear reader, lying on the concrete path, was a solitary paper clip.

Well, I'm not proud.  I stooped.  I picked it up.  I pressed the pages of my typescript between the paper clip's claws and stuck down the envelope, which I slipped into an adjacent letterbox.

Time taken to sub postally:  60 minutes.
Time normally taken to sub electronically:  1 minute.

The womag I've subbed to had better accept it.

Equality and Diversity - College Style

It had been a hard week at college, with a lot of discipline problems, so it was good to get to Friday afternoon.  C Group were working on an assignment, supposedly completing it by the end of the lesson, but, on the first proper sunny day of the year, we were aware of the burble-burble of conversation and laughter outside, and cars roaring off and away as people left as early as they dared.

Jake was like a duck on a butty, chatting, sitting on the desk, looking out the window.   "You've got to see this," he cried.

Daniel, sitting right next to him, jumped to his feet.  "Heeeyy!  Look at that!"

"Two lessies holding hands," Jake said, pushing the casement open.

"What?  What?"  Pushing back their chairs, the rest of the class stampeded to the back of the class to see for themselves.

"Come back and do your work," I said, realising how feeble this sounded even as the words left my mouth.

"But Miss.  They've got to be lessies."

"Well, you know," I said, "when you go abroad, you often see women walking along arm-in-arm."

"That's abroad, though, innit?  That sort of thing don't happen here."

CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD TIME FOR SUBBING

College is off for a whole fortnight and I'm trying to make good use of the time.  Two flash pieces subbed so far and another on the cusp.  One of them, 'The Doctor's Receptionist', has already been accepted by the Short Humour Site.  Having worked hard on that, I'm well-chuffed.  Here it is:

http://www.short-humour.org.uk/3writersshowcase/3writersshowcase.htm#CHB

I enjoy appearing in the Short Humour Site. It's very much my sort of place, down to earth, pithy and, like it says on the tin, FUNNY.

Can I have now have a rant about Christmas.  I spent most of last week preparing for it!  Seeing family, including daughter, son-in-law to be and son was terrific.  Seeing other friends and relatives throughout this week is also great.  But do we need ALL the razzmatazz?  It's all becoming too much, imo.  We - all of us - spend far too much on presents, on things the recipients don't want or need, just because we feel we should give them something up to a certain price.  I enjoy cooking the traditional Christmas stuff - Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, mincepies, trifle etc - but again, a bit of moderation is required.  Do we need all the trimmings, every year? 

As for Christmas TV... don't get me started.  I personally have only watched one thing, 'The Murder on the Orient Express' with David Suchet on Christmas night and it was RUBBISH!

And white Christmasses?  No, I really don't want 'all my Christmasses to be white'.

So, on with the subs!

Success... and Failure

Sounds like a Russian novel.  Or a Woody Allen spoof.

"A Family Day Out' has been accepted by 'Pig in a Poke'.  Hurray!  Always one of my favourite stories and featuring my favourite muse (who I hope doesn't recognise himself), it will appear in the January issue.

Got feedback from 'Writers Forum' on 'The Internet Bride'.   They were generally quite positive, although I never thought it was good enough to appear in the mag.  I'm glad I got the professional feedback.  It doesn't hurt to punch above your weight sometimes.

Bit fed up with mags which don't bother to reply.  Two stories in particular are going begging:  a story about a computer who talks and a children's story about two cats.  I am considering resubbing in the next day or two.

My favourite muse has gone on the student demos and come out unscathed.  I'm so cross with him for putting himself in danger and yet I'm writing my novel about people who put themselves in much greater danger.  I'm trying to tap into my feelings of anxiety as a protester's mother and his frustration at me for being that way.

Charlie Britten... About Me

I don't often get a chance to write about me...  I'm not interesting.   That's what my writing's for.

So what do I write?  Fiction almost always.  I used to think of myself just as a novelist, and that's still what I enjoy doing most.  Like most hopeful novelists I have loads of dusty, and pretty awful, manuscripts stuffed in obscure drawers of unused cupboards, growing more yellow and more dog-eared with each year, floppy discs too.  More later works (recent enough to be stored on memory stick) include a novel about growing up in middle-England in the 1970s.  My current novel, 'And the Wall Came Tumbling Down' (which has been in progressed for far too long and still nowhere near finished) has a Cold War theme.

One of the reasons 'The Wall' has been so slow is that common sense prevailed and I started writing shorts as well.  (How was I going to have any cred with a book publisher if I had no backline in short stories?)  I particularly enjoy flash fiction, making a point or someone laugh in 200 or 300 words or less.  Although I have had mainstream work accepted, I seem to have most success with humorous fiction, and all my work has a funny vein, even when I'm writing something deadly serious.

I've had work published on Fictionatwork, The Short Humour Site, The Linnet's Wings, Delivered (print magazine), Hobo Pancakes and Mslexia.

I belong to two writing groups:  Chapter 79 and Writers Dock.  The members of these groups, and of Great Writing and the old More Writing site, have taught me a lot.

In the real world, I'm an IT tutor at a college of further education in England.  I live with my husband, son and cat, and my daughter lives with her husband to be on the south coast.  Other interests are all a bit random: web design, cats, travelling in eastern Europe.

What else do you need to know?  Not a lot.  Read my work instead.