Little Update
Posted by bencooper | Filed under News
Hey all,
Just a brief post to update y’all. I’ve been hard at work in my new job as Assistant Editor for Acoustic Magazine. It’s been a busy old week getting to grips with the various roles I have to perform.
At the moment I haven’t had the energy to do any new writing what so ever 
I’m hoping this will change over the next month or so as I become acclimatised to the work. Nonetheless I’m loving the work and it’s a wonderful environment to be working in, with lots of fun as well as work!
Well, I don’t have too much more to say at the moment so I’ll say adieu for now!
Work, the final frontier.
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News
Well, I’ve finished university now. All I’m waiting on is my dissertation to be marked and then I’m done and dusted. Of course there’s the graduation ceremony but I’m not intending to attend that, I’ll just wait for my degree certificate to arrive in the post. I’m not the sentimental type and sitting around for three hours while the whole arts faculty lines up to collect theirs just doesn’t appeal.
But the point of this post is to pass on some good news. After all my worrying and agonising over the future and employment I’ve managed to land a great job. I am the new assistant editor of Acoustic Magazine. A series of events just happened to dovetail all at the same time and I start on Monday!
The job is a multi faceted one. It incorporates not only assisting in deciding what goes into the magazine but also feature/review/interview writing, sub-editing, proof reading, liaising with the graphic designers over layout, being the port of call for industry contacts, chasing up and arranging interviews and all kinds of other jobs. It looks like it’s going to be stressful but fun, the environment is great and the job sounds genuinely rewarding, with some nice perks.
Of course I’m wondering what effect this might have on my fledgling writing career. Although the job is a Monday-Friday one it’s obviously going to be busy and creative, and could leave me drained. On the other hand I’ll be doing a lot of writing for an internationally distributed magazine, which can only improve my skills. Hopefully, after an intial settling in period, I’ll not only have the time to write but also be inspired to.
Gareth Powell touched on the issue of job vs writing in this post.
Anyway, I’ll be sure to let you know how it all goes, and if you happen to play acoustic guitar/mandolin/banjo etc. or are just into the acoustic music scene please be sure to get the latest issue, which you can find in W H Smith’s and, from the next issue, Tescos too.
Ta ta for now
Tags: acoustic magazine, Gareth L. Powell, job, News, writing
And so, the end is near…
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News
Yup, my dissertation is all done. It just needs to be printed, bound and then handed in to face the cruel ministrations of university tutors!
It’s been a fun three years, not least because I’ve largely avoided work (of the remunerative sort) and so had a lot of time to play videogames, go to the cinema, hang out with friends…oh and read lots of fine works of literature and improve my analytical and critical thinking, as well as my writing.
Now of course I face the impending world of work which I have so skillfully avoided…oh well.
In truth, like many people of my generation (and I suspect of other generations, regardless of what grandparents like to say of a simpler time where men were men, and women were second class citizens: “But at least we all knew who we were, dear”) I’ve never really known what to do, and I think this is the root of my worries about the future.
Ah well, as the Romans used to say “Your problems sort themselves out by walking”. It worked for them, until a load of Goths come walking in the other direction!
PS I’ve posted a new link to a fellow aspiring writer, Leigh Barlow. It’s over on my side bar and in the weblinks page. Have a quick gander…go on…go on…go on…ahh you will…go on…
Great news!
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News, Poetry
I received a wonderful email today from Iain Muir, the poetry editor from Aphelion. He has accepted my poem ‘Orion’s Belt’ for publication. It’s just going to miss the May issue so will feature in the June issue.
Poetry has not been my main focus in my creative writing but it feels great to have something accepted from a reputable on line sci-fi webzine. You can follow the link above or go from my weblinks page if you want to check the magazine out. It’s a good read and I’m delighted to be published in it.
Well, hopefully this will be the thin end of the wedge. I’ve got other poems and some ideas for stories to work on once I hand in this darned dissertation next week.
Onwards and upwards! To infinity and BEYOND!
I’ll shut up now 
Tags: submission
The bitter sting of rejection…
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News
Dramatic I know but,yep, that’s right, I’ve finally heard back on a couple of my stories and the outcome was as expected…well not entirely.
I received a very nice email regarding one of my stories from the fiction editor of a ‘zine. He liked the story but felt that a couple of issues needed to be addressed. He offered some advice on what he felt needed to be changed or tightened up and said that if I was willing to attempt a re-write he would strongly consider it for inclusion in his ‘zine.
That buoyed my spirits somewhat. It wasn’t a firm acceptance but the acknowledgement that the story had some merits and could be published felt good. So I’m tackling a re-write at the moment, it’s coming along OK but having to take a back seat to my dissertation and essays for my degree.
Two of the other stories came back rejected. It’s an odd feeling and I went through a strange cycle of emotions.
Firstly a tinge of anger mixed with indignancy…huh so my story’s not good enough for you huh! Well what do you know! This then quickly gave way to a kind of depression…I’m never going to be a writer, who am I kidding? What’s the point of even trying if I can’t place a couple of stories, might as well give up now and save myself some time and disappointment.
This depression phase lasted for a day or two. To try and lift myself out of it I trawled some websites about writing, rejection and success. It made me feel slightly better and some of the advice out there really did give me the strength to get back at it, particularly rules from the late Robert Heinlein ( you can read them here). Having read this page, along with Robert J. Sawyer’s own take on the rules, I decided to have a look at the two rejects.
One of them I can see why it was rejected. It’s an older piece, more than a year old, that I submitted on a creative writing module and earned a 1st for. I hadn’t looked at it since getting it back in the second year, other than a brief check over for any grammar or punctuation cockups before submitting. Having re-read it I can see all the weaknesses in it. Crucially I think I sent it out to the wrong market. I intend to do some serious editing and re-writing on this one and send it to a more appropriate magazine at a later date.
The second one felt stronger to me, a recent effort that I had spent plenty of time on. I read it and re-read it. I had received no advice for this story, just a form rejection – thanks but no thanks. So I decided to follow Heinlein’s fifth rule – get it back out on the market. I hunted around and found a magazine that could be a perfect market for the story and emailed it off to them the very same day.
So it’s been an interesting learning experience. I think I’ve acquitted myself well and definitely feel better for having come out the other side of rejection hell! I can see now that this is going to be a really hard slog, with absolutely no guarantee of any success, but hopefully I can learn from it all and make myself a better writer.
Later,
Ben
Just a thought…
Posted by bencooper | Filed under News
As I’m drawing near to the end of my degree I’ve been thinking a lot about where I go from here. With the current economic crisis predicted to get much worse before it gets any better (my sincerest thanks to all those city slickers) employment for graduates looks pretty poor.
I’ve applied for a PGCE (for further education meaning I’ll teach in colleges, not secondary school) and I’m waiting to get the date of my interview. I’ve done a bit of language teaching and enjoyed the experience, except for a few difficult students. I like the idea of earning your keep by helping others in some way. My mum said it’s interesting that all three of her children are in, or moving towards, jobs that support and nurture others. My older sister is a substance abuse councillor, my little brother (also at uni) works with autistic kids and wants to make this his career after finishing his degree, and I’ll hopefully be moving in to teaching. No surprise that my parents are both nurses…
But a good friend recently wondered if I might be selling myself short by opting for teaching. He seemed to choke on the phrase but he suggested “thinking outside the box”. Although he knows I’ll find teaching rewarding (if the workload doesn’t kill me) but he thought I should think about alternative employment: research for the BBC, working at an arts centre etc.
I could see his point. It seems that, often from an early age you’re led to believe that there are a few jobs open for you and that choices you make at 14 (GCSE), 16(A-level) and 18(degree) decide your fate FOREVER! Don’t pick sciences at GCSE, well no A-level for you so you can forget about working with animals. That was my dream and a “helpful” careers advisor at my minor public school ground it out of me because, although I was good at biology, I was mediocre at chemistry and piss poor at physics and maths.
So here I am about to finish an English Literature degree. English teacher then…God damn it! I’ve become a cliché. No actually the cliché for an arts grad now is several years of temping followed by a team leader position at a call centre. All while writing a novel/putting together an installation/making a short film.
But what else is open…oh well you could try a graduate scheme and slowly lose your soul as a manager trainee at Sainsbury’s. Don’t like that? How about admin? No? PR? No…oh well. Guess it’s call centres for you then.
But there are a million ways to make your money, we’re just driven down the route of teacher, manager, doctor, lawyer (if you went to a school like mine). Because, let’s face it you wouldn’t want a job that doesn’t swallow your life would you?
Of course I’m spewing a lot of bile here, and I don’t mean to denigrate those who do devote a lot of time to their careers. It’s their choice and I respect that. Thing is a lot of people don’t seem to have a choice. The government gives lip service to flexible working whilst simultaneously wanting to force new mothers back to work as soon as possible.
They should be raising their kids! Motherhood is the single most amazing thing in THE WORLD. It’s something I’ll never get to experience, except by proxy, but I recognise that the time a mother devotes to her child is instrumental in the rest of that tiny, new life. And if that new mum then wants to have flexible hours, well she can request it and get it. Hopefully it won’t damage her career but who knows, office politics are a strange thing.
If you’re not a parent…well you can try. Companies wouldn’t want relaxed, more productive staff who are absent less though (qualities proven to exist in much higher frequency with flexible workers). Instead they would rather force people to work five days a week, as many hours as possible (forget a cap on the working week like those lazy but much happier and more productive Europeans), take as little holiday as possible and refuse to pay the first few days of sickness…
I’ve digressed slightly…
I think the main argument I had, which got lost in my anger, is that there are many ways to earn a living- none of which should dominate your life UNLESS YOU MAKE THAT CHOICE FREELY.
They say time is money. Actually time is life. And you only get one.
Update
Posted by bencooper | Filed under News, Short Stories
Well I’ve just polished off another story and sent it out. So I’ve submitted four out so far. I think now I might wait and see what comes back from these before submitting much else. I’ve got a few that need working on in the meantime, plus the ever mounting university work…
If one of these four gets accepted I’ll be over the moon, however I’m keeping a realistic hat firmly on my head. When you read about famous books that went on to sell millions of copies but were rejected by a dozen publishers before being picked up, well, I guess you have to understand that getting stuff out there is a hard game.
Tags: short story, submission
Submission
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, News
I finshed off another story yesterday. Some final polishing was done over a few days and then I flung it out in to the far reaches of t’interweb.
So that’s three out and three more that need polishing, plus a new story, plus looming uni deadlines for essays! And here I am fiddling with my blog…that damned procrastination again!
Tags: News, stories, submissions
New fiction and review!
Posted by bencooper | Filed under News, Reviews, Short Stories
Hi,
I’ve just posted a piece of flash fiction on the fiction page. Hope you enjoy it.
I’ve also written a review of Gareth L. Powell’s short story collection The Last Reef and added a link to his site on the web links page.
Enjoy!
What’s New?
Posted by bencooper | Filed under News
Well I’m just finishing off another story and will be sending it out into the battlefield in the next few days. I’ll let you know how that goes…
I’ve finished the first draft of three other stories and I’m hoping to get those polished off over the next couple of weeks and get them out of the door. One is a space opera of sorts dealing with mutants and family loyalty and weighs in at over 5000 words at the moment. The second one is a short adventure story and the third is about human relationships with machines.
I’m also starting work on a new story that I’m intending to submit for publication in an upcoming anthology. The closing date is the end of May so I’m confident I can get it done in time. I don’t want to reveal too much at the moment as the idea is still maturing in my head. It’s a near future, post-apocalyptic story and that’s all I’m saying for now.