Previously an Agony Uncle, Mike Gayle is a freelance journalist who has contributed to a variety of magazines including FHM, Sunday Times Style and Cosmopolitan. He is the author of ten best-selling novels: My Legendary Girlfriend, Mr Commitment, Turning Thirty, Dinner For Two, His ‘n’ Hers, Brand New Friend, Wish You Were Here, The Life and Soul of the Party, The Importance of Being a Bachelor, and the latest The Stag and Hen Weekend. His ninth book is a non-fiction work called The To Do List, about his own efforts to complete a 1277-item To Do List.

How do you feel about your books being included in the ‘chick lit’ genre? Do you think male romantic fiction deserves a title of it’s own, and what would that be?

There are up and down sides to being included in any genre whether it’s literary fiction, crime or indeed Chick lit. On the one hand it helps to deliver an audience to authors who may not be particularly well known and who otherwise might have struggled to find a readership. On the downside the effect can be quite limiting in terms of its effect on the author’s output but also in terms of readership too. I’ve lost count of the number of times new readers have told me that they’d avoided my books because they thought they were one thing and only realised how wrong they were when they finally forgot about preconceived notions and just picked up the books. In an ideal world there wouldn’t be genre there would just be good books and people would be open to the idea of reading books about anything at all.

Before you wrote My Legendary Girlfriend, you did a lot of writing for magazines. Was it a difficult transition from writing factual articles to writing a novel? 

It was actually a lot easier than you’d imagine. As a journalist I’d long since grown tired of writing what editors wanted me to write and so the opportunity to explore my own imagination couldn’t have been more welcome. As for going from writing 1000 word articles to 90,000 word novels it was simply the case of breaking down the big task of writing a novel into lots of little tasks. People always ask how do you write something as mammoth as a novel and my answer is always the same: write little and often.

Did you get many rejections for My Legendary Girlfriend before it was accepted? And how did you keep up your motivation whilst you were waiting for your ‘big break’?

I’d completed the novel in its entirety before I sent it to agents because that was my primary goal: to prove to myself that I could write a novel. By the time I was ready to send it out I was actually quite confident of the quality of what I’d written and because of that I felt sure it would eventually find a home so you can imagine my disappointment when I received my first rejection letter quickly followed by my second! Thankfully the third letter I received was from someone who actually liked it and so she gave me some very detailed notes and we worked together on making it the best book it could be.

Can you give us a few insights into the way you approach writing a novel, after you’ve had the initial idea? As creative writing students, we’re encouraged to carry notebooks with us at all times to jot down of ideas. Is this something that you do?

It’s a great idea but like most great ideas has positive and negative attributes. The negative is that it leads you to think that everything you write in it is a sharp insight into the human condition and not the product of someone who has a new note book and wants to write in it! The positive is that when you do have a moment of genuine insight it helps to write it down rather than (as I have done) convince yourself that it’s so profound a thought that it will NEVER leave you and then promptly forget about it when you come to your next writing session.

You have a strong internet presence with your website as well as Facebook and Twitter, and seem keen to interact with your fans. How important do you think social networking is to the modern author?

I think it’s essential but then again I think interacting with your audience has always been fundamental. As a teenager I was a huge fan of the band The Wedding Present and they were the most approachable band you could ever hope to meet. Everything I do I pretty much nicked from them. Being approachable, being interested in your readership engenders a two-way feeling of community that can be positively infectious. Who doesn’t want to belong to a club where everyone thinks you’re ace?

Your website contains a lot of tips for anyone hoping to get published, but what is the single most important piece of advice you  would give to an aspiring novelist hoping to follow in your footsteps? What is the most useful piece of advice you’ve been given as a writer?

I’ve already told you it: Write little and write often. Too often new writers set themselves targets that are simply too high. Better to write 500 words and be desperate to get back to your desk the following day then 2000 and fill with dread at the sight of the computer. Writing is a habit. Cultivate it correctly and you’ll never want to stop.

I loved Turning Thirty – it reminded me so much of my own life and circle of friends, but I was a little bit disappointed that Matt and Ginny didn’t get together at the end. Do you think it’s important to occasionally  upset readers expectations like this?

I think you have to do what’s right for the story and for me the main story of Turning Thirty was an attempt to answer the question ‘is it okay to turn thirty and still not have your life sorted?’ For me there could only ever be one answer and that’s why Matt’s still single at the end of the book. That said I do think it’s important to challenge your readers, they might not always like it but I think they do tend to respect it.

You’ve now also written Turning Forty. Can you tell us when this is due to be published, and what was it that made you want to revisit those characters?

Turning Forty is due out June 2013 and has probably been the most difficult novel I’ve ever had to write. I actually finished a draft that I’d spent a year working on back in 2010 but ended up dumping the whole thing because it just didn’t feel right. It was quite traumatic at the time but it was absolutely the right thing to do because sometimes even if you plan you, you only find out what a book’s about by finding out what it’s not about. The new version couldn’t be more different to the previous version, in fact the only thing it has in common is the title and the characters, but it’s absolutely the right story. I absolutely love it and can’t wait for fans of Turning Thirty to get hold of it.

Your latest novel The Stag and Hen Weekend is quite unusual in that it’s really two novels which can be read from front to back or from back to front. How did you come up with this idea, and what did your publishers think when you told them?

I knew that I wanted to write about a stag and hen weekend but didn’t want to write a story that was too obvious. I tried looking at it a million different ways and then finally my wife came up with the idea and the moment she said it I knew that she’d got it. I suppose what that shows is that it’s good to talk about your ideas with the people closest to you but be prepared for their eyes to glaze over once in a while! My publishers loved the idea and immediately rose to the challenge of turning out a book with two covers which is no mean feat!

We see that you liked ‘Late Lunch’, we loved that too? We love Great British Bake Off too and celebrate our writing milestones with cake. How do you celebrate when a book is published?

Ha! I’d forgotten that I mentioned Late Lunch on the website! I used to love that programme. I think I’ve only ever had one proper launch party and lovely as it was I’d rather my publisher spent the money on advertising rather than feeding and watering my friends and family! These days publishers prefer to stick to a nice lunch for the author which I for one am a huge fan of.

Ink Pantry would like to thank Mike Gayle for his time, we appreciate him agreeing to be interviewed for our blog. Mike’s latest novel, The Stag and Hen Weekend, is available now, published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Find out more about at http://mikegayle.co.uk/

Hi Emily, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Can you begin by telling us a little about yourself?
Thanks for asking me. I am a writer and writing tutor, living in London. My most recent published work was a piece of travel writing set in Spain, which won the Telegraph’s weekly Just Back competition. I’ve also just finished a short memoir for the Tangled Roots project, which I’ll say more about later, and I am heavily into the editing stages of my second novel. When I’m not writing or teaching, I enjoy reading, and dancing, and riding around the city on the back of my partner’s motorcycle.

We must mention your first novel, A Tiny Speck of Black and Then Nothing, which came joint third in the SI Leeds Literary Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize. How did the story of Anna and Loll come about, and how much of your own experiences of Japan are in the finished book?

A Tiny Speck of Black and then Nothing ended up coming third in the Yeovil Literary Prize too, which was another bit of good luck. The beginnings of the novel’s story began to form in my mind while I was working in Japan in my early twenties, teaching English to high school students. The narrator Anna is also an English teacher, but my time in Japan was, thankfully, rather less creepy than hers eventually becomes. For the record: I never lived with a nightclub hostess, had a friend disappear, or found myself caught up in the criminal underworld of Ōsaka. On a different note, the traditional tales that my Japanese mother used to tell me were another huge influence that found its way into my book.

Do you have a preferred writing genre given that you have written novels, short stories, and non-fiction?

Novel writing is what I get up and do most days, but I enjoy writing non-fiction and short stories in gaps between drafts or just breaks when I need to take a breather from my main project. Shorter pieces can provide variety, but that isn’t to say that I find them any easier. I’ll sometimes write a short story in a single sitting, but it can take me months, even years, to get it into a respectable shape.

You are also an experienced tutor at City University London, New York University in London, and with the Open University. How do you schedule writing time into your day?
I write in the mornings and do other things – like teaching or admin or the ironing – in the afternoons. It wasn’t always like this. I’ve had all sorts of jobs in the past, working as a bookseller, a dental receptionist and a secretary amongst other things. I didn’t used to have this level of control over my time, but now I’ve reached the stage with my writing and my other jobs that I can organise my life in this way.
What are your favourite books and which authors have inspired you?

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller, What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn and The Secret History by Donna Tartt are novels I could read again and again. Underground, in which Haruki Murakami interviews witnesses and survivors of Aum Shinrikyō’s sarin gas attack on the Tōkyō subway system, provides some fascinating insights into contemporary Japanese society. I’ve noticed that Murakami is very good at drawing out the extraordinary details of seemingly ordinary lives. The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon is another favourite, as is anything by Jean Rhys. I first read her when I was sixteen, and after that I never thought about the art of writing in quite the same way again.

Many of our followers are Open University students and/or aspiring writers themselves. Can you offer one piece of advice that you have been given or that you give your students to help stay motivated?
Keep reading and keep writing: it might sound as if I’m stating the obvious, but both of these things are so important. If you were a violin player, you couldn’t expect to be much good if you never found the time to hear other violinists playing, or didn’t bother with any practice yourself. It’s the same for a writer. Your writing can become hesitant and laborious if you don’t keep it up. Even if all you can manage is a matter of minutes per day, that’s better than doing nothing.

Is there anything you are working on at the moment that you would like to tell us about?
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve just put the finishing touches to ‘The Memory Album’, a piece that I was commissioned to write for Tangled Roots – a project of stories and events that celebrate multi-racial families and mixed-race people in Yorkshire. It is being organised by the writer Katy Massey. When she got in touch to ask me to be involved, I jumped at the chance play a part in such a worthwhile scheme. You can find out more about the project at http://www.tangledroots.org.uk/

Once again, thank you, Emily, for your time.

Thank you. It’s been my pleasure.

Website: www.emilymidorikawa.com
Twitter: @EmilyMidorikawa

Kevan Manwaring is a writer, storyteller and performance poet.  He has also taught on all three Open University creative writing modules.  Other projects include The Cotswolds Word Centre.

To start off, please tell us a little about where you are based.

I live in Stroud, Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds – I moved here end of 2010. It is a small town with a great community feel – and a vibrant creative scene. There are a lot of poets, storytellers, writers, musicians, free-thinkers, etc. The ‘Green’ scene is big, and it’s surrounded by gorgeous countryside, where I love to walk.

Having taught A174, A215 and A363, what do you find most rewarding about teaching with the OU?

When I see a student have a breakthrough – when something sinks in, the penny drops (in terms of the theory); or comes together (in terms of their practice). When I hear of a student’s success, eg publication or winning a competition (I’ve had students get book deals with major
publishers and win national competitions). With some students returning for A363 I’ve seen them develop over two academic years – so it’s satisfying to see this fuller arc and the development of their writing.

Many of the Ink Pantry staff and its readers are budding writers.  What would you say is the most common mistake new creative writers make?

Overwriting (in terms of density of style, purple prose, exposition, etc).
Under-writing (in terms of not writing every day and not writing the thousands and thousands of words you need to hone your practice).

In poetry: focusing on the meaning of the words, rather than the sounds.

In prose: poor structure, viewpoint slippage, and lack of telling detail. Most good writing comes down to sufficient visualisation. So many stories I read/assess seem ‘out of focus’ – and it’s frustrating, as you know something interesting is happening there, but you’re cut off from it. As someone who trained in art originally this has fed into my writing. I have a very visual imagination – experiencing cinematic dreams most nights! – and I write what I see in my mind’s eye. You need to make it vivid for the reader.

You were commissioned in 2010 by The History Press to work on a collection of folk tales.  Why do you think it is important to preserve folk tales?

Well, in the risk of being pedantic this project was more about reviving folk tales – rather than preserving them in an academic, set-in-amber, way (if it is possible to capture an authentic definitive telling, as each teller does it differently). The History Press commissioned professional storytellers like myself to gather together the best tale of our chosen county and, critically, retell them in our own words, with a sense of orality – i.e. for  performance; not that these are verbatim transcripts, but they capture the flavour of a live telling and the style of a particular teller/author. Many were cobbled together from fragments of local history, folklore, archaeology, field-work and imagination – so they were very distinctive creations, rather than ‘historically accurate’ versions. Being a writer rather than an anthropologist, this creative freedom engaged me more. I had the opportunity to write 80 short stories – and that’s how I approached them.

A couple of the Ink Pantry team members have been asked to perform their own poetry at special events.  We’d love some pointers on how to capture an audience when performing poetry.

From early on as a performance poet I quickly realised that if you made an effort to learn your poem off by heart then you’re going to gain the respect and attention of the audience more than just reading it. Plus you can maintain eye contact, use both hands, and not have any barrier between you and your audience. Other tips – cut the pre-amble, don’t apologise, project. Connect to the core emotion of your poem and transmit that to the audience. Enjoy yourself!

One of your recent projects led to a show called ‘Tales of Lust, Infidelity and Bad Living’.  This sounds like something we should hear more about!

This was a show based upon my life. No, seriously, it was one of a series of performances based upon The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, edited by Steve Roud and Julia Bishop. Bath Literature Festival wanted to create a series of storytelling performances of the ballads and that was the one that happened to still be available. I performed it in the Guildhall in Bath – there were a lot of French language students in the audience, who seemed to like it!

There are a lot of sexual politics in those traditional ballads – something I’m exploring in my new show, The Snake and the Rose (based upon my two folk tales collections) in collaboration with my partner Chantelle Smith who is a folksinger.

You are behind the Cotswold Word Centre initiative.  Please tell us about the Centre and the philosophy behind it.

It is a platform for language, literacy and literature based at Hawkwood College, near Stroud. We launched on World Book Day this year and our patron is novelist Jamila Gavin. The idea is to provide a focus for the plethora of spoken and written word-based activity in the area: poetry readings, book launches, storytelling cafes, writing workshops, literary rambles, showcases, competitions, small presses, and so on. It is early days yet – but there’s some exciting stuff in the pipeline. Folk can find out more by following the link below.

You have said your new book, Desiring Dragons Creativity, Imagination & The Writer’s Quest, is the culmination of 13 years’ teaching creative writing.  What kind of things will readers learn from the book?

They will have to read it! But it’s more about process rather than particular techniques. I didn’t want to write another ‘how to’ book, of which there are many (some better than others). It explores the creative process; and strategies for what I call ‘long distance writing’. Many writing courses focus on teaching skills that will lead (hopefully) to publication – but what happens after that? How can you keep going through the long-haul of writing a novel (or several – as someone who wrote a five-volume series, The Windsmith Elegy, over ten years)? Through the ups and downs of a writing life – the setbacks and successes? This is for the writer who wants to be a ‘marathon runner’ rather than a ‘sprinter’.

Finally, you are organising a symposium on the Dymock Poets this year.  Our readers would be interested in hearing more about this event.
The Dymock Poets, as they became known, were a group of friends who gathered in a small village in Gloucestershire just before the First World War: Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfrid Gibson, John Drinkwater, Edward Thomas, Robert Frost, and Rupert Brooke. For a while they enjoyed long walks, cider and poetry, publishing 4 editions of New Numbers (an anthology which included the first publication of ‘The Soldier’: ‘If I should die think only this of me…’). Frost and Thomas mutually empowered each other to go on to become the great poets we see them as today. When War was declared the Dymocks’ idyll was irrevocably shattered. Frost and his family returned to America. Thomas and Brooke went off to war and did not return. I wanted to celebrate the centenary of their creative fellowship – on the eve of the First World War when they gathered in Dymock (June-July 1914). I have co-organised (along with poet Jay Ramsay) a day-long symposium in Stroud on Saturday 26th July. We have some great talks throughout the day and in the evening, a showcase of modern Gloucestershire writers responding to the themes of the Dymocks. It is this creative response to conflict that interests me more than the whole glorification of War thing. You can book through the Stroud Subscription Rooms website. I find the Dymock Poets story touching and inspiring – to the point of co-writing a feature-length screenplay about them. At the moment, it looks like a drama-documentary will be made. Anyone interested in the Dymock Poets should check out the Friends of the Dymock Poets site: http://www.dymockpoets.org.uk/index.html   Many thanks to Kevan for taking the time to speak to Ink Pantry.  Links to Kevan’s books and some of the projects he is involved in can be found below.

www.kevanmanwaring.co.uk

http://www.compass-books.net/books/desiring-dragons

http://www.literatureworks.org.uk/Book-Features/Special-Features/Creative-Fellowship

Cotswold Word Centre: a platform for language, literacy, and literature

Can you tell our readers a little something about the piece that you have had published in Fields of Words?

The first of my pieces to feature in ‘Fields of Words’ is the poem ‘The Crow People’. It was inspired by Quentin Blake’s book, ‘The Life of Birds’, which features illustrations of numerous anthropomorphic avian species. ‘Exit Fragments’ is my second piece to feature and is a work of fiction inspired by my fascination for the Arctic.

When it comes to writing, what is your preferred genre?

On the whole, I tend to write dramatic fiction, but there is usually a tendency for speculative or fantastic elements to creep in!I

Why do you write? Who or what inspires you?

I write as a way to explore my imagination; I’m constantly conjuring up new worlds and new characters in my head and I need write them down before I lose them.

As a writer it is also important to be a reader. What are you reading right now? What are some of your favourite books?

Currently, I’m reading ‘The Eyre Affair’ by Jasper Fforde. My favourite books include ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell, Emily Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ and anything by J.R.R. Tolkien, Iain Banks or Neil Gaiman.

Which of the Open University creative writing course have you taken, and what are your thoughts about them? Any advice for future students?

I have taken both A174 and A215. My advice for future students is to write lots – even if some of what you produce isn’t your best work, it could still be useful for drawing ideas from in the future. Don’t throw anything away; I’ve still got everything I’ve written since I was three years old.

Tell us one interesting fact about yourself!

I like to run around the countryside with a cloak and a sword in my spare time.

Five Favourite Things. Tell us your favourite meal, movie, song, colour and place!

Meal: Venison steak. Movie: Pan’s Labyrinth. Song: ‘Rainy Night House’ by Joni Mitchell. Colour: Indigo. Place: Lochinver, Sutherland.

Share with us what you are currently working on.

I’m currently working on a collection of poetry.

Facebook Page- http://www.facebook.com/alexandra.hepburn.writer

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/a_k_hepburn

Website – http://lastfallingstar.tumblr.com