Another acceptance!
Posted by bencooper | Filed under News, Poetry, Short Stories
Hi guys,
I received an email today from Robert Moriyama, the short fiction editor at Aphelion magazine. He sent me a very complimentary acceptance letter for a story I submitted earlier in the year. It will be featured in the next issue of Aphelion, which should go live this Sunday. Obviously I’m over the moon about this. Aphelion have also recently accepted a poem of mine, which should run in the same issue.
Robert said it was a good entry in the John Wyndham genre, of a disaster seen through the eyes of an ordinary person. I’m a big fan of Wyndham so this doesn’t come as a surprise, although being told it is good was a nice lift, after a string of rejections.
With the final month of university being a mad scrabble, and the new job taking up a lot of my time, writing has taken something of a backseat over the last couple of months. However I’ve got a couple of other stories ready for submission and some more poetry, and this has given me a much needed boost to carry on and get things done.
I’ll put a short update post on the site, and through my Twitter account, when the story and poem are up.
I hope you enjoy them!
Later.
Tags: Fiction, News, short story, submission
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…
Poetry for my peeps
Posted by bencooper | Filed under General, Poetry
Just posted a couple of little poems for your reading pleasure in the poetry page. They’re both SF themed haikus.
The haiku is a Japanese form of verse that found great popularity in the West, mainly America, from around the 1920s onwards. In English the traditional form is 3 lines of 5,7 and 5 syllables. Of course in its orignal Japanese the haiku is simply a column of characters running down the page, but with the 5,7,5 morae.
Ezra Pound was a big fan of the haiku (and other Easter forms of poetry) and the similarities between haiku and some of the Imagist poems is evident: the compression, the distilling of an image into as few words as possible. Pound also had a real thing for Japanese and Chinese ideograms because they mean the thing that they represent (this isn’t the place to start talking about language and the limits of representation, but he has a point).
It is taken almost for granted that Western haikus don’t compare favourably to the original Japanese ones. Indeed many Western haikus (my own ones included on the poetry page) don’t adhere to the Japanese “rules” such as nature imagery, a seasonal representation (e.g cherry blossoms = spring) and so on.
Nonetheless they are a fun form of poetry to write, and if taken seriously can be very hard to write well. I don’t claim that my own are anything special but I enjoy them anyway. Hope you do to.
Bye.
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
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