Writer's block and postcard stories: Jan Carson on her new book

We are very proud to have published two fantastic short story collections this month: First fox by Auckland author Leanne Radojkovich and Postcard Stories by Belfast author Jan Carson. There are of course stories behind all stories, and we asked Jan to tell us about hers.

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By the end of 2014 my imagination was almost worn out. I’d just returned from two months in America promoting my first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, and researching a book about Bob Dylan. I was juggling a more than full time day job plus the onslaught of speaking engagements and interview requests which seem to come hot on the heels of a new book. I wanted to write some short stories but every time I sat down at my lap top the inclination evaporated and I’d find myself fiddling about on Facebook or simply falling asleep, (there are, it has to be said, both positive and negative aspects to being the kind of writer who likes to write in bed). I had very few ideas. This was not normal for me. I have always been blessed by an overleaping imagination. My parents, who knew me as a non-stop talker long before they knew me as a writer, aren’t quite as romantic. They call it a tendency to exaggerate wildly and take most things I say, both on the page and off, with a generous pinch of salt. Still, my imagination has served me well over the years. I’d never before been short of ideas for stories, so much as the time to actually get them written. In December 2014 I found myself, for the first time in my writing career, exhausted and without any ideas worth developing.

Jan Carson, author of Postcard Stories

Now, with hindsight, I have come to realise that this might have been a good time, to relax, rest and catch up with my creative self. But I am not very good at resting, and writing is the only way I know how to relax, and I am, (I’m finally ready to admit), a dreadful overachiever. So, instead of taking a wee break from writing I began the New Year by setting myself a ridiculous challenge. I would write a short story every day for the duration of 2015. This would force my imagination back into fifth gear. This would get me writing again. This, I quickly discovered, would feel like trying to push a particularly unwieldy elephant up a hill for 365 days straight. Thankfully, I’d limited myself to the two hundred or so words per day which I could, with cramp-inducing care, squash on to the back of a regular postcard. By January 8th I’d realised my mistake. There were still 357 days left in the year and I was already fed up forcing myself to find ideas, to develop ideas and squeeze these half-baked ideas on to tiny pieces of cardboard, but I hadn’t left myself any room to back out. I’d already recruited 365 recipients for my Postcard Stories. I’d already promised I would post stories to friends in South Africa and China, and slightly less exotic, Dundonald. If I didn’t knuckle down and write the stories, people, (including small children and very elderly ladies), would be disappointed. I couldn’t be the responsible for disappointing old people so I got writing.

By mid February the art of finding a daily story had once again become instinctual. I would listen in the line at Tesco, find myself all ears on the bus to work, eavesdrop on my colleagues and devour Radio 4 documentaries with an appetite I hardly recognized. My imagination went from first to fifth gear in a matter of weeks and by the time I’d completed the project on the 31st December – the last Postcard Story dropping into a Portrush postbox on a stormy New Year’s Eve at the North Coast – I was seeing potential stories everywhere. It is testament to the success of the experiment that I was to spend the entire first fortnight of 2016 resisting the inclination to write about all the Postcard Story prompts I kept stumbling upon as I made my way from one end of the day to the other. I closed the book on Postcard Stories, started a new novel and was grateful to have my imagination back. I never, for a minute, thought that my little postcards would have a life beyond the various fridges and mantelpieces they’d landed upon. They belonged to a season in my life which hadn’t been the easiest and I was thankful for them, but ready to move on.

However, last summer, when the Emma Press expressed an interest in publishing a collection of the Postcard Stories, and I took them out of storage to begin re-reading them in order – January through to December – I began to realise that they were more than just snapshots of a difficult year. Each one was a little anchor connecting me to a person, or family, who had had some part, however small, in shaping the stories I tell. There were postcards to my parents, my cousin in China, my old housemates from my years living in Portland, Oregon, university friends, now relocated to exotic places like South Africa and Bristol, the older people I’ve grown to know and love through my arts practice. I started to get excited about curating a little collection of these short stories. This would be a snapshot of so many of my most important people. This would be a way of giving something back to them; a small token of my gratitude for the part they’d played in shaping me. I chose my epigraph from Sam Allingham’s beautiful short story collection, The Great American Songbook, “your life so full of people, you can hardly believe it will ever end,” because this is a collection as much about the people who inspired these stories, as the stories themselves.

I am grateful to the Emma Press who immediately understood the spirit of this pamphlet, who held each little story gently and coaxed the goodness out of it, so the editing process was a joy rather than a trial. I am grateful also to the fabulous illustrator Benjamin Phillips who caught the spirit of the stories and created images which are both beautiful and very human. It is such a lovely object of a book because of all their hard work. It is such a pleasure to be able to give this back to the fifty two friends included in the pamphlet and the three hundred and thirteen others who we couldn’t quite squeeze in, but are nonetheless important, for having helped me remember why I began to write stories in the first place.

Postcard Stories

ISBN 978-1-910139-68-4 / RRP £6.50
Publication date: 16th May 2017
Pages: 80 / Stories: 52 / Illustrations: 6
READ MORE / BUY NOW

What we're looking for in the prose pamphlet submissions

We launched a call for prose pamphlet submissions last month, which felt like a significant step for the Emma Press. Up until now we’ve only published poetry, because our first publication was a poetry pamphlet and it felt sensible to build on what we had learned from publishing it. Then, a few months ago, it occurred to me that we could publish prose pamphlets which would join our existing series of full-length poetry pamphlets. They would be as short as the poetry pamphlets and therefore less daunting to edit. I suddenly felt ready to open up our list and I’ve been excited about it ever since.

The Emma Press Pamphlets

I’ve had quite a few queries from people about our submissions guidelines and what we’re actually looking for, so I thought it would be helpful to lay out my vision of these pamphlets and give you a sense of what I hope to find for our new prose list. If you have any questions/suggestions about other suitable formats, feel free to ask me in the comments section.

THE BOTTOM LINE: £6.50

The core idea of our pamphlets is accessibility, to writers as well as readers. From a writer’s perspective, this is an opportunity to showcase your writing and ideas, at a time when you might not be ready for a full-length book. From a reader’s perspective, this is a low-pressure, low-cost purchase, insofar as a pamphlet only costs £6.50 and is about 36 pages long. It's likely you'll be able to read the whole thing, maybe several times, so you'll probably get your money’s worth.

So, my advice to writers is this: please think about the reader and how your pamphlet proposal will seem to an optimistic, philanthropic bookshop browser with £6.50 burning a hole in their pocket. Your idea must feel like it's worth at least £6.50 and, ideally, by the time the reader finishes the book and is considering buying more Emma Press pamphlets, your book has got to feel like it was a bargain at £6.50.

I know this might seem excessively worldly to demand of a writer, but it’s probably the most useful thing I have to tell you. When I’m reading your proposals and deciding which ones to pursue, I’ll be asking myself: would I, an individual with little money and still less time to spend reading for fun, fork out £6.50 for this?

THE WRITING: Be clear

For me, the accessibility of the pamphlets for the readers extends beyond the price and the length, and into the writing itself. I’m a huge stickler for lucidity in literature and I have little patience for deliberately vague and opaque writing. I’m not against experimentation, but at the same time I value the sense of an unspoken contract between the writer and the reader; the communicator and the recipient. If you don’t make the effort to convey your ideas to the reader, why should the reader bother trying to understand you? If you don’t want people to understand you, why not just keep a diary and keep it to yourself? I fully believe it’s possible to write cleverly and innovatively whilst still being clear.

I think style is a big part of readability, so I’ll also be looking for writers whose style I enjoy. I like writing which has an awareness of rhythm – just because it isn’t poetry doesn’t mean it can’t scan. If you use long sentences, make sure they’re structured well and used sparingly. I'd recommend reading your writing aloud, to see if it rolls off your tongue. If you find yourself tripping over parts of what you've written, or getting mixed up over which clauses to stress in order to make sentences make sense, you might need to take another look at your style.

I particularly admire the authors Douglas Adams and Hilary Mckay for their style. 

THE FORMATS: A whole range

Short stories. I think a single short story, or maybe two short stories, would work really well as a pamphlet. After reading my favourite short stories, I always feel like I’ve been clubbed over the head and have to sit quietly for a little while, to process what has happened. You can do a lot with a short story, and I’m hoping we find some writers at the starts of their careers, pre- bestselling novel, as well as more established writers who fancy mixing things up a bit. I love children’s and YA literature, so writing in those genres is very welcome. I’ve had a few queries about flash fiction, and to be honest I’d be concerned that a collection of 30-odd pieces of flash fiction might not feel like any more than the sum of its parts, unless perhaps there was a unifiying narrative. If you think your proposal will negate my concerns, then by all means send something in.

Short plays. I really like Tom Stoppard’s one-act radio plays, like Artist Descending a Staircase, so I can imagine publishing some tightly-written mini-dramas or comedies. I think we could have some fun with the launch events!

Comics. Emma Press books already contain illustrations, so I’m very interested in exploring fully-illustrated, graphic novel-style pamphlets, for both fiction and non-fiction. If you are a graphic novelist and have an idea which might suit a short black-and-white pamphlet (or even a colour one, possibly), we’d be very happy to hear from you.

Essays. Some writing is just too good to leave on a blog, magazine or newspaper website, so we'd love to build up a list of non-fiction pamphlets. We're interested in all kinds of well-written essays which make sense as a pamphlet, including essays on politics, humorous subjects, travel, memoirs, and any other specialist areas. I know this is vague, but if you're a really good writer and can write something interesting and engaging then we may be interested in you.

Recipes. I love reading cookbooks, even though I rarely have any intention of using the recipes. I like good food writing (hello Nigella) and I'd like to publish pamphlets of maybe 10 recipes, each accompanied by my illustrations and with quite chunky introductions to each recipe. General food writing is welcome too.

Guides. The pamphlet lends itself very well to manuals and guides, so if you have some wisdom or facts to impart on the world, step this way! Do consider which subjects might appeal to us, as we won't be able to publish something that we don't understand at all and have no interest in.

Speeches. A bit of a wildcard, but why not? Any modern-day Ciceros and Plinys will certainly get a look-in, as we have a soft spot for orators and rhetoricians. You could even send us a dialogue, like the ancient philosophers!

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The call for prose pamphlet submissions is open until 25th January 2015. In order to submit, you need to be a member of the Emma Press Club (you join by buying a book/ebook/set of postcards from our website) and pay a £5 pamphlet submission fee per proposal. Read all the details here.