Sarah Hilary is one of the first people I met on line when I
first started publishing. She and I both had stories at
Every Day Fiction and the
forum there was my first opportunity to become a member of an internet writing
community. That was four years ago. This month, WriteWords, another writing
community based in the UK, launches its first anthology,
Pangea:
An Anthology of Stories from Around the Globe, so I thought it
would be interesting to talk to Sarah about how the anthology was put together.
Gay: Sarah, I’m
so excited when I see writing projects that include authors from all around the
world. The Pangea Anthology does just
that. It illustrates how the internet can create communities and bring writers
together. Can you tell me how this came about? But first, how did the authors
meet?
Sarah: Thanks,
Gay, yes it’s an exciting project to be part of. You know how it is with the
internet—very few of us have actually ‘met’ but, at one time or another, the
authors who are featured in this anthology were all members of the
WriteWords online forum, helping one
another improve our writing and generally being supportive and encouraging. I
love when that happens. Writing can be a damn lonely business—and sometimes, at
some points, it has to be—but meeting a group of people you trust and who’ll
cheer you through the rough patches, is invaluable. One of the best times in my
writing life was when you and I were writing buddies; we got so much done!
Gay: What exactly
is WriteWords? How did you discover
it and how did this group decide to tackle this project?
Sarah: WriteWords is an online community. You
pay an annual membership fee and can choose between various groups, e.g. flash
fiction, novels, short stories, where you hang out, post pieces of your
writing, give feedback, get feedback, and so on. I found it by accident, and
spent a couple of happy years learning to write flash fiction in groups with
stars like Bill West and Tania Hershman. Good times! As far as Pangea goes, it didn’t become a project
until two writers, Indira Chandrasekhar and Rebecca Lloyd, decided to try and
put together an anthology of the “best of WriteWords.”
They read stacks of stories posted in the groups and contacted the authors they
were interested in. Indi and Becca have written about the experience. I was
chuffed to be one of the authors they approached.
Gay: So it sounds
to me that belonging to an online community has been something that has helped
you grow as a writer. Let’s talk a little about the community that has created
this anthology. You say they read tons of stories and then contacted the
authors they were interested in. Does this mean you wrote a story specifically
for the anthology or subbed something you already had?? How did this collection
come about with these specific stories?
Sarah: My two
stories chosen by the editors weren’t written especially for Pangea. In fact, as far as I know, none
of the stories were. They were posted online in the short story forum on WriteWords. The two editors read through
every story posted there, and made their selections. What’s really interesting
is how the stories—chosen this way—fitted into three central themes. Identity.
Order versus chaos. Loss. I guess these are themes which repeat in fiction,
being such important ones. I find I write a lot of stories about identity, for
instance.
Gay: Identity,
yes. That theme is seductive to most readers since so many of us are continuing
to learn about ourselves and our place in the world. I’d like to take the
concept of identity and have you talk about it a little in the context of your
identity as a writer and how being part of writing communities has influenced
you. Do you belong or have you belonged to other groups—organized or loosely
connected—and how have they helped you to develop your own writing talents?
Sarah: You ask
the best questions! I’m loving this interview. The other evening I went to a
one-woman comedy show by someone I work with. At work, she’s a very sweet
woman, never draws attention to herself in any way. On stage she was a huge
presence - and very very funny. She was pretending to be someone else, although
still using her real name and talking about her family history. It was her
personality that was different. This made me think about the disguises we wear
when we’re “on stage” or otherwise. I’ve mostly belonged to online writing
groups, where there’s the luxury of wearing a disguise.
I say “luxury,” but for some people it can be the opposite,
I know. It’s very sad when we make friends online only to find out that the
people we trusted weren’t real, not in the sense that matters. I consider
myself extraordinarily lucky to have found so many genuine friends through
online groups, not least yourself, Gay, with whom I buddied up for that
terrific period when we were both writing so much, and learning so much. I
think all readers desire an audience—we write to connect to others, to readers—and
when that connection is broken it hurts, horribly. But I also believe that, as
writers, we have to retain that trusting belief, that ability to put our words
out there to be tested.
I also think, and this is the other side of the coin, that
we have to develop an ear for our writing. No one else can really help with
that. It’s a shame, but it’s true. We have to arrive at a place where we know
instinctively when feedback from other writers—or readers—is valuable, and when
it’s not. Not all advice is good advice. Indeed, some of it can be downright
bad. So we should share, and we should listen, but it’s our own voice that we
should be listening out for. I read somewhere recently that “A good editor
opens up spaces in a writer’s head that were previously closed,” I think the
same is true of good writing groups. If you get the sense that your mind is
being closed instead of opened, then it’s probably time to move on, to find
somewhere where the opposite is true.
Gay: Last
question. So what do you take from being a participant in this anthology is
drawn from around the word? How has being part of this project enhanced your
writing in the future?
Sarah: It’s
interesting, insofar as the stories I have in
Pangea were both written a long while back. I’ve learnt a lot about
writing since then, but what I’ll take away from the experience with
Pangea is the wealth of stories being
written around the world—and how the themes came together, without any
framework in place to make that happen. How big the world is, and how small.
And I learnt a heck of a lot about publicizing a book. It’s been a hard slog,
but worth it to see the thing coming together now. We have this blog tour—thanks
to the generosity of writers like yourself—and it’s truly international. Not
just writers, either. We’re appearing in
Nokia
Connects, a blog read mostly by photographers, but it goes to show
that the creative world will open its arms to projects like this, that bring us
closer to understanding the world and our places in it.
NOTICE: Interviews by Rumjhum Biswas with other Pangea authors begins at
Flash Fiction Chronicles July 16th.
