A Day in Hay
Apologies for the lack of posts on the blog. I've had a few busy weeks since half term and although I've managed to keep to deadlines for my writing, it's the blog that has suffered. 

On Wednesday 27th May, my daughter and I went to Hay Festival. We were only able to go on that day and it was relatively quiet but at the weekends it was much busier. There's so much to choose from and I can see why many people stay up there for the whole week so that they can attend every day. 




The weather was kind to us, dry but cold, and we were able to wander around soaking up the atmosphere of the festival. Aren't these deck chairs wonderful?





Our first event was 'Adventures In Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case'. A strange choice, I hear you say. Jo, my daughter, was always obsessed with stationery when she was little and no holiday to France was complete without a trip to the hypermarket so that she could add to her collection. We were entertained by James Ward, the author, whose lively and hilarious talk made us look at the humble paper clip, post-it note, fibre-tip pen or Pritt stick in a totally new light! For 5 stationery facts to impress your friends at parties, please Click Here.


After lunch we went to the BBC tent and went behind the scenes of Ambridge with the Editor of 'The Archers', Sean O'Connor. The tent was packed and Jo did comment that she was perhaps the youngest member of the audience whereas I was completely at home! We are both avid fans of the programme and from a writing point of view it was interesting to hear how the editor organises a number of writers to present a uniform style. The extensive knowledge of Archers listeners can help shape the show's plots after dragging up story lines even writers have forgotten, we were told.

We did attend a rather more literary event, too. Rose Tremain was ably interviewed by Peter Florence about her short story collection, 'The American Lover'. She read extracts from the book and talked about the soul of her characters.The question and answer session at the end showed how many of her fans in the audience had an in depth knowledge of her books.


We used the shuttle bus to go into the ancient market town of Hay, too, and browsed through the many book shops for which it is world famous. Founded by Richard Booth in 1961, it has become one of the world's largest secondhand and antiquarian book centres. Some of the bookshops specialise whilst others carry general stock.




It was a great 'mother and daughter' day out. Jo and I have promised ourselves we'll plan in advance next year and attend on a number of days rather than restrict ourselves to just the one. 

Did you attend the Hay Festival? Who did you see and what events would you recommend? Thank you for reading my blog. I'd love it if you left a comment. :-) 

You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook Page.

The Mask
Do we really know how people are feeling or what they are thinking by just looking at their faces? Fran, the main character in my latest story, puts on a symbolic mask each day before she faces the outside world. She ensures that the worry lines soften and the taut line of her mouth becomes her trademark smile once again so that no one will guess what is happening to her behind closed doors. She feels ashamed of the abuse she is suffering at the hands of her all-controlling husband, Max. 

There is a real, porcelain mask in the story too. It's ironic, perhaps, that they should have chosen that mask at such a happy time when on honeymoon in Venice. 

My writing buddy, Helen, recently visited Venice and I asked her if she had any photos of masks she could send me. I'd written the first draft of my story when she was away and had described the Venetian mask as being a violet colour with an almost indigo sheen, edged with gold lustre beads. In my mind, I was using the shades of the bruising hidden on Fran's body. Imagine my surprise when I received Helen's photo of a mask that was on the wall of her hotel. Not the indigo I had described in my story, maybe, but enough violet and gold for it to be a real coincidence! 

At the end of the story, the real mask is shattered during a struggle when Fran leaves Max and she no longer has a need for the symbolic mask either. The daily masquerade is over for her and the story concludes on a hopeful note.

Have you used an object in a similar way in any of your stories? I'd love it if you shared your ideas and left a comment. 

Thank you for reading. You may follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

How Things Have Changed
My story 'The Unbroken Bond' has been published each day this week on Creative Frontiers. I hope it is shows what life was like for some girls in the sixties compared to today. It explores the love between a mother and her child. It is something never to be broken no matter how much time has passed, no matter how much heartache has been felt. 

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

CONCLUSION

Many thanks to Martin, the editor, for publishing it.

Book Launches
I'm sure many of you will have attended a book launch either on-line or in person and it's got me thinking about how important these are for writers. After all the hard work and the long journey from writing to publication, every writer surely wants to ensure that the book is a success and to present it to as many people as possible. A book launch seems to be a good way of doing that. Through a book launch, we as readers are made aware that there is a new book due out. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are invaluable for informing us of this as well as where and when the event is going to take place. . 

Here are some events which took place in April:

Patsy Collins's 'Over The Garden Fence' on-line launch party was held on 3rd April and the pictures on her blog showed plenty of glasses of bubbly and snacks that we could sample when we attended. We were invited into her garden and the many comments from blog followers joined into the spirit of the virtual event. Patsy also gave us a flavour of the kind of stories we would find in the collection and there was a lovely photo of her garden with Spring flowers in full bloom. 


There is often a theme for the party. I'm sure many of you were tempted to join Samantha Tonge's 'Game of Scones' on-line launch party on April 20th where cakes and scones seemed to be the order of the day. As well as pictures of the book's cover, the photographs of delicious jam topped scones proved too hard to resist together with various other delights including lovely Greek baklavas and even a bottle of my favourite tipple, Baileys.  There were competitions throughout the day, too. As Sam said on her Facebook page, the on-line parties are a special way to make readers aware of newly-published books. Digital authors don't have a physical book to sign as you do if you hold an actual book launch.

  On Thursday evening, I went to the launch of a new short story and poetry journal,'The Lonely Crowd', in Cardiff. I went with two friends, Kath and Gael, from my writing group and you will find an excellent post about the event on Kath Eastman's Blog. I enjoyed hearing the writers read their own work and when I return to the stories and poems in Issue One, it will be their voices that I will remember.


The only book launch I have been involved in so far was that of 'Fifty Flashes of Fiction', the anthology of WorcesterLitFest & Fringe's Flash Fiction competition, last November. I wrote about it in my December 2014 blog and if you click on the link for Linda's Jottings and scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see Linda Daunter's thoughts about the experience too. There is also a photo of her reading her winning entry. The closing date for this year's competition was last Friday and I'm pleased to report that I sent in my three entries by the deadline!

Have you ever held a party or event to launch a new novel or collection of short stories? How did you find it? Do you have any tips or advice for anyone who is thinking of hosting one soon? I would love it if you shared your ideas. :-)

Thank you for reading my blog. You may also follow me on Twitter @JanbayLit or on Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

Back to Writing
This has been the longest I've been away from my blog. I had a lovely Easter break with a houseful of grown up children and two young grandsons. The Easter egg hunt took place in warm sunshine for a change and it was great fun. However, that was two weeks ago so I've no excuse. I have to get back to the computer and get some serious writing done.

I think I've told you before that I work better if there 's a deadline looming. I've been working (slowly!) on an entry for a short story competition where the closing date is May 15th, a whole month away! It's about a little girl who gets lost during a busy carnival when she and her parents are on holiday. It was inspired by the wonderful spectacle we watched on a recent visit to Tenerife in early March. I've written it from her dad's point of view and have tried to convey the emotional roller-coaster he experiences when she goes missing. After the first draft, it's around 2300 words and the word limit for the local competition for which it was intended is 1500 so it's far too long. I took it along when I met with a writing buddy, Kelly, last week and she came up with an interesting point. If I try to cut a third of the draft in order to comply with the competition word limit, wouldn't I lose the essence of the story? Perhaps it would be better to keep it for another competition and write another one. After editing and looking at the story again, I have decided that Kelly is right and so I'm trying to find inspiration for another story. Of course, this means that the deadline is closer now so maybe that will be just the incentive I need to get back on track. 

Remember NaNoWriMo? Back then, I had a definite deadline, November 30th, I wrote 50,200+ words and achieved my goal by the end of the month. Since then, I have been side-tracked into writing short stories and progress has slowed to a halt. With this in mind, Kelly and I set ourselves a goal. By the time we next meet in a few weeks time, we will spend a minimum of six hours a week writing more of our novels. This could be a day or two mornings/afternoons. This may seem a short amount of time but the idea is that we can still write other pieces too. Watch this space!

I'm pleased to report that my story, 'The Curse of the Turquoise Pool', made the long-list for the Nottingham Writers' Group competition on the theme of 'Water' but sadly didn't make the shortlist which was published on the site today. I'll keep trying!

Have you ever taken too long a break from writing? If so, what was the best incentive to get you back to writing? I'd love to hear what worked for you.

Thank you for reading my blog. You may follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit  and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

Points of View
Last week in the blog, I talked about reviews and their importance both to the writer and to prospective readers. When writing a review, we give our opinions or points of view. 

For writers, though, the point of view or POV is a decision we make even before we start to write. That may be just a simple choice between writing in the first person or in the third person. Especially in short stories, you would stick to one character's POV. We have to ask ourselves who is telling the story and whose eyes and voice will we be using. There are advantages and drawbacks to both writing in the first and third person. Writing in the first person allows you to create a very credible character where you know his or her deepest thoughts and emotions. The limitation of this is that you can only describe what you saw and this could set you apart from the action. If you are using the 3rd person, you can still relate the whole story through one character's eyes or point of view. As Della Galton has written in her book, The Short Story Writer's Toolshed, 'viewpoint is very important when it comes to making your characters sympathetic - as readers, we tend to warm to the character whose head we are in.' 

In longer stories and novels, the advantage of the 3rd person is that you can introduce other people's viewpoints and then the reader may know something that another character doesn't. In the Monday evening meeting of WriteGroup, we had an excellent discussion about a member's writing which was written in the 3rd person. We talked about whether the writing was from the narrator's POV or the character's point of view. In the chart, it would be called the 'Objective' 3rd Person and the 'Limited Omniscient' 3rd Person.

Here is an interesting article about what fiction editor Beth Hill calls 'Deep POV' from The Editor's Blog Thank you to fellow writer, Sue McDonagh, for sharing it. I hadn't heard the term before. Beth Hill suggests that with deep POV, 'readers see scenes through the viewpoint character, feel story events as that character does.' She goes onto say, 'Deep POV allows writers to do away with he thought, he felt, he wondered, he saw, all those phrases that intrude into fiction, that unnecessarily encumber the story.' Perhaps we do this when we write anyway and just not label it with the term 'deep POV'.

As writers and readers, which do you prefer - 1st or third person? I tend to write most of my stories in the first person. In my dual narrative novel, Clara's story is told in the 1st person whereas Rose's is in third. Although I'm not in Rose's head as I am Clara's, I hope that by telling the story from her viewpoint consistently, she still comes across as a credible character whose thoughts and feelings are conveyed to the reader through what she says and does. 

How many of you write in the 2nd person? I have only written one story in the 2nd person and feel that the emotion of the piece comes across as it is based on personal experience. It doesn't fit the short story guidelines for a magazine or a competition as it reads more like a monologue so it's sitting in my file going nowhere. Any suggestions?

Thank you for reading my blog. I'd love it if you'd comment about which POV you prefer. You may follow me on Twitter on @JanBayLit and on Jan Baynham Writer Facebook Page.

Reviews

Alfie Dog Fiction is running a new READER COMPETITION where all you have to do is download a paid story during March and send a short review of the story (approx 30 – 50 words). The winner will receive £100 and two runners up will each win one of their short story collection books as either a paperback or ebook as they prefer. The competition seems to be a good way to promote the importance of reviews even for individual short stories. I'd love it if you chose to review one of my stories. You'll find them HERE.

The importance of reader feedback cannot be ignored and could be said to serve a number of purposes:

1. Reviews help other readers choose what they want to read. Your opinion can help persuade or dissuade a reader from purchasing or borrowing a book. 
2. They can boost readership for an author. Review sites can be an excellent way of marketing a new book.
3. Reviews help you analyse a book in a way that you don't tend to do when you are actually reading it. It's the reflection afterwards that helps form your review.
4. They help writers know which parts of their writing are working and what needs to be improved.

Author, Luisa Plaja, gives her top tips for writing a good book review on the Book Trust site. (Please click on the link for the full interview.) In summary, she recommends:

1. Starting with a few sentences about what the book is about but obviously no spoilers.
2. Thoughts and feelings about what you liked about the book and the way it was told.
3. What you didn't like, what didn't work for you.
4. Summary of the review, the type of reader the book may suit
5. Any marks or star rating

A writer friend of mine, Kath Eastman, regularly writes reviews on her blog on Nut Press. This week she reviewed James Hannah's debut novel, The A-Z of You and Me. It's a very positive review that explains why she thinks the novel is successful. She talks about the way that Hannah has written the story and the review is analytical as opposed to being descriptive. 

What about poor reviews? Can a bad review still be helpful?
What do you think about the importance of reviews?

Thank you for reading my blog. It would be great if you left a comment about your review experiences. :-) 

You may follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit and my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.