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
New fiction and poetry
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, Poetry, Short Stories
Hi all!
I’ve posted a new flash fiction story on the fiction page and also added a poetry page with my first sci-fi poem on it. The poem was inspired by recent work I’ve done on the Imagist poetry movement, check out Ezra Pound et al for examples of proper Imagist poems.
As usual any comments on anything are welcome.
Later,
Ben
Finding the time.
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, Poetry
Time. We have so much of it in theory and yet there’s never enough hours in the day. I’ve been fortunate for the last three years, being a student has meant I have had plenty of time to spend doing things I genuinely enjoy. Of course like many students I’ve been skint, but you soon learn how to make those loan installments go a long way.
Before going to university I had worked a string of largely no-brainer 9-5 jobs: shop work, call centres, office admin. At that stage I had no inkling that I might enjoy, or want to try my hand at, writing. I was playing in bands and generally enjoying it. Going to band rehearsal from 7:30 to 11 three nights a week, doing recording sessions, or coming back from gigs in the early hours never seemed to bother me much. Having a dead end job had its perks.
I have noticed since being at university that, despite having more time, my sense of creativity and enjoyment has been somewhat stifled. With all the books to read and essays to do the last thing I want to do some times is write or read anything, and the quality of some of the literature is frightening. I haven’t picked up my bass guitar in months, except for the odd noodle.
Let’s face it, I’m lazy. Sometimes I wonder how writers keep going and find the space and time for writing. Most of them have a day job (and not necessarily a no-brainer), plus families and other interests. On top of all that they manage to keep writing and submitting short stories, novels, plays, poetry, journalism. Are they superhuman?
Not really. They just have a passion and a work ethic: something student life has completely destroyed in me during three short years. They fit the writing in, an hour here, fifteen minutes there. It all adds up.
One of my tutors at university, Martin Goodman, told me that he gets up at five each morning to squeeze a couple of hours of writing in before coming in to take his classes. Writing is something he has to do, and he’ll find a way to get it done, even with all his other responsibilities. When I told him I find it hard to motivate my self sometimes (OK, most of the time), he told me not to focus on finishing a story or novel etc. as that can be de-motivating. Looking at the task ahead you can feel like giving up, it seems unmanageable. But, he said, you can do the next paragraph, the next sentence, and it soon adds up. Do some writing every day, without fail.
I read an interview with a writer, whose name escapes me, and he said he sets himself a target of 200 words a day. It seems so low, so attainable, that he doesn’t get disheartened. Then if he beats it great, if he doesn’t – well he made his target. If you write 200 words a day, five days a week, you would have the first draft of a 50,000 word novel finished in a year. Baby steps.
So I’ve made a new resolution. I will write something creative everyday. It might be some flash fiction, part of a story, a vignette or even some poetry. But get into the habit and keep writing. 200 words a day sounds fine to me.
Today I drafted out a bunch of poems, all with a sci-fi/speculative theme. Poetry is something I’ve always been nervous about, much moreso than fiction, but I figured, what the hell. And I have to say it felt good. I’m no Keats, Tennyson or Hardy but it was enjoyable and got the creative juices flowing. One even gave me the idea for a short story.
I’m investigating possible publication routes, but I guess sci-fi poetry is a really niche niche.
If I’m feeling brave I might put up a couple of sci-fi-kus (a science fiction haiku) or some other stuff on my writing page. Or if you’re particularly unlucky 
Ta ta for now.
Thoughts on Self Publishing…
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General
Is anybody out there?
I haven’t posted in quite some time, unfortunately I’ve been bogged down with essays and my dissertation and spending a lot of time in the library with my nose in books on subjects as diverse as Auschwitz, the poetry of Tony Harrison and books on the theory and nature of Sci-fi. It’ll all be over soon though.
I’ve taken a day off today to enjoy the lovely weather and had a thought about self-publishing that I wanted to get off my chest, so here goes. Buckle up it could be a bumpy ride.
As yet I’ve had no success at getting my stories published. One ‘zine has requested a re-write, which I’ll be tackling after Uni is done and dusted, two others have rejected me and I’m waiting to hear on two others. It’s a hard slog even at this early stage but everything I’ve been told by struggling and established writers prepared me as such, so I can’t really complain.
So, anyway, I got to thinking about self-publication. With technology advancing there seems to be a multitude of ways to get your work out there. There’s the traditional vanity presses, who will print a few hundred copies of your book in exchange for some hefty cash. Or how about print on demand, where you can print just a handful of copies. An e-book perhaps, which can go up on websites for download. But then I thought: “Self publishing is for people who can’t write”, but is it?
You don’t have to look hard to find “literary legends” who were self published: Horace Walpole, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling. All self published at various points of their careers and nobody would dream of calling them bad or failed writers. Who would call William Blake a bad poet? He printed all his own poetry, drew the illustrations and bound them. But these days it appears that self publishing is the domain of the failed writers. But it doesn’t seem to be that way in other fields.
As a musician you can get in a band, write some songs, record a demo or whole album at home (thanks to nothing more than some software and a PC), put singles up for sale on iTunes etc. and, although you won’t have the status of an act signed to Warner Bros. or Sony, nobody would say you’re a failed musician. Likewise and artist can sell his or her work through eBay and earn hundreds of pounds a painting (I know someone who does this and makes more money than selling through galleries)…are they a failed artist because their work isn’t in a gallery?
So why doesn’t this work for writers? If I publish a hundred odd copies of a collection of short stories, at my own expense, and sell them through a website or place them in a couple of local bookshops why would I be snorted at if I told anyone I’m a published writer?
I’m not sure I have an answer to this. It appears that for work to be of value people whose real motivation is the bottom line of cold hard cash must approve of your work. If you don’t think that agents, publishers, record company execs etc. don’t focus on the bottom line then consider why these days if a writer sells less than 10,000 copies with a big publishing house they’ll often be considered very lucky if a second book comes out (of course this doesn’t apply to more niche work like poetry etc. but then these are often published by small presses). Or think about the huge numbers of bands that get an album or two out only for it not to set the charts alight and then get dropped (again I know of a band from Devon that this happened to). And of course once you’ve proved you don’t sell it can be even harder to break back in than if you’re unproven. Years ago many novelists would write several “apprentice” novels before establishing a fan base and becoming a best seller, and don’t even mention that now endangered species the mid-list novelist.
Of course even trying to rationalise it this way I still can’t bring myself to seriously consider self-publishing. Like everyone else I feel I need the affirmation that goes with having someone else think my work is worthy of publishing.
Perhaps in a way sci-fi is a harder nut to crack as so much of the entry level publishing (short stories in fanzines and magazines) is done out of a real love of the genre. As Philip K. Dick noted, nobody got rich writing sci-fi.
Later,
Ben