Pumpkin

Pumpkin is moving to another address

2009-01-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin is moving to a new site!

Type http://sites.google.com/site/pumpkinnewwriting/ into your browser, or click here to be redirected.

Comments on the new site may be posted below - let me know what you think.

Better late than never

2009-01-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

After much ado, issue 1 of Pumpkin is finally online, featuring new pieces by Frances Gapper, Sarah Hilary, A.J. Kirby, Helen Pletts, and J. Boyer. Read them all by clicking on Issue 1 on the menu on the right.

Many thanks to everyone (and especially the contributors) for your patience while I got my act together. I hope you enjoy the issue.

***

Submissions are now being accepted for issue 2, which will be published in the spring. Please take a moment to read the Submission Guidelines before sending your work in.

Calypso

2009-01-18T02:41:00.000-08:00

by Frances Gapper

His love for Penelope seemed to depend greatly on distance and self-
idealisation. I tried to distance myself when he talked about her. Not
feeling pain is a trick of the mind, just like making somebody fall in
love with you, a minor magic. He praised her skills, while blaming my
laziness; he asked why I just sat around all day. Familiarity made us
strangers to each other, I can see that now.

He expected me to entertain him; it was something women just did. I’d
been alone a long time and maybe lacked conversational skills. He knew
the names of all the plants, despite this island having its own unique
microclimate. He took cuttings. He’d invented a special jar, to
transport them safely back home to Ithaca.

When we made love, I forgot my name, my immortality and hence the need
for caution. He, my friend, once had a similar experience, while
crouched among the giant sheep. Having told the Cyclops he was Nobody,
he then forgot his own name for a while. The gods always make the best
jokes.

Frances Gapper writes very short stories and pretend poems. These have appeared in Wigleaf, Pretext, Brand, other places.

The Spirit Level

2009-01-18T02:36:00.000-08:00

by Sarah Hilary

From overhead a skitter of chair legs says morning more reliably than the clock he fixed to the wall.

He’s redecorating the bathroom, orange. He has a hammer to break up the old tiles, working to a rhythm, swinging, bringing it down. She likes the pattern, pulse, a noise like living.

When he goes away she’s frantic. For the children there’s no change; they cannot understand her pacing, snapping fingers, counting the bricks from one end of the room to the other. The new line of orange tiles isn’t even; he left the spirit level behind. She gets into the habit of placing it everywhere, along the door jamb, on the floor, across the tops of shelves.

She stands on tiptoe and holds it on the ends of her fingers flush to the ceiling, watching its long eye empty and fill with green spirit, seesawing until it stops. Nothing in the cellar is straight.

The children sit in front of the television, moon-faced, tongues worrying at the hollows in their teeth.

She worries the food will not last until he returns. She sets the spirit level on the lid of the chest freezer then places it inside, where ice has formed a scummy shelf. The green eye runs away, blinking, winking from the glacier polythene of pork chops.

She thinks, What if the floor isn’t the floor but the ceiling? What if I’m living on my side? She pushes her ear to the wall and fills her head with the thwapping of her blood.

One of the children tries to take the spirit level off her and she yells, clutching the thing to her breast as if it’s the child, not the big-eyed rot-toothed thing grabbing at her.

The spirit is strange, a beautiful bubble shaped like a heart being squeezed, being swallowed and blown back out, bursting back and forth, boiling, smoothing flat and low in the level. She could watch it for hours.

The idea of smashing it comes and goes, exciting her. At night she sleeps with it against her sternum, feeling her lungs inflate, deflate, chasing the spirit to and fro. She dreams she cracks the glass but the spirit keeps its shape, filling the cup of her hand, a fluorescent globe.

In the morning she thinks of falling on the level, like a Samurai. Of driving – hiding it – up inside her body. She would walk stiffly but always find her balance.

He comes back, bringing the sharp stink of outside, bitumen and burning leaves. Autumn, already? He’s brown, there’s sand between his long toes, loose skin below his ribs, whole handfuls of it. He’s old, she remembers, was old before she was born. Pouches under his eyes, presents for the children, garlands of plastic flowers.

She hated him for a long time, feared him for longer, but he comes back smelling of outside, bringing the familiar beat of his feet on the cellar floor, and she reaches for him with something like love.

Sarah Hilary won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with Fall River, August 1892, and has two stories in the Fish anthology 2008. She was a highly commended runner-up in the Biscuit Short Story Contest 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, One Last Pick-Up. Her work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee. Sarah blogs at http://sarah-crawl-space.blogspot.com.

Distance

2009-01-18T02:29:00.000-08:00

by A.J. Kirby

Let me measure the distance between us. Let me evaluate this vastness of space and time like an oceanographer. Let me map out the wax and wane of our separation. You know that I work with figures, solid truths, but what equation could describe how we have drifted apart? What compass could express my yearning to be close to you again?

I could count the revolutions of the trundle wheel, but there would be so many clicks it would be like trying to calculate the number of random finger-snaps by a whole football stadium of Fonzies. I could fire off a depth charge, deep under the surface of us; see a three-dimensional rendering of the yawning chasm which slices through our hearts, but I couldn’t bridge that gap. Now, even when I am with you, we are not together.

You hate these uncomfortable weekends. You must have come to think of them as prison-time in recompense for a crime which you did not commit. Like the Count of Monte Cristo you imagine a daring escape, but can’t quite bear to punish you gaoler so. Remember how I used to read you that text? Remember how excitement curled around you like a cat’s tail?
How can I impress you now? How can I travel that well-worn path into your good books once more; do I need to beg? Maybe I should. Maybe you’d be satisfied with my grovelling. It would give you that sense that everything was right and natural in the world again.

And so, when I come to you, I’m Sting’s Englishman in New York. I’m alone and alien and, dare I say it, a little apathetic in my arthritic attempts at a connection. Perhaps I too have given up. You’re a hard-faced urban sophisticate that I can’t hope to compete with these days. You’re always name-dropping, dwarfing my petty little efforts to interest you. You’re a collator of foot-notes; always ready to reference some of the real celestial bodies that populate your life nowadays. I hardly even recognise you.

It goes on and on. You’ll say: ‘Oh, I saw blah, blah in the deli. We did lunch.’ And I’ll scratch at my beard and rack my brains as to where I might have heard that name before; which in-flight magazine might have featured that particular star? As I’m doing this, you’ll perform that exaggerated rolling of your eyes that was once the bane of my life. It pains me to see you looking so tired, so worldly. You were never worldly; I always used to feel that if I wasn’t holding you so tightly, you’d float off into the air, never to be seen again.

‘You don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?’ you’ll sigh. Your disgruntled breath will be thick and foggy in the cold air.

Inside, I’ll be screaming. I don’t do lunch like you do. It’s too much of a leap for me. The only things I do are these eternal flights; this crazy-ass acquisition of air-miles and bags under my eyes. I do not do things like lunch. Lunch is something that just happens, like breathing.
So, we’ll sit in silence for a while, and you’ll think about art and I’ll think about science. Maybe I’ll lightly touch your knee or reach out for your gloved hand. We’re both aware that time is trudging relentlessly onwards and it is our duty to make of that time what we will. And we do try, don’t we? We try to keep up appearances in the best English tradition. I hand you your lean sandwich and tuck in to my own now-cold grease-burger. We huddle into the bench and try to find things that we can talk about. We remark that all things are ‘nice’, that the air here at Harlem Meer is somehow cleaner than in the rest of New York.

You look as though you have been crying out for some good old-fashioned fresh air. It puts the colour back in your cheeks; makes you look more natural somehow and not so grey and urban. It softens the features of your face and brings that dancing light back to your eyes.

‘I’m going away in the summer,’ you say, suddenly. Your voice is pitched somewhere in the mid-Atlantic now, and seems coldly unfamiliar. ‘California State let me in despite what happened in the fall.’

‘It’ll be on account of your connection to the famous Dr. Grey,’ I joke, trying to play down my agony at the thought of even more distance being placed between us.

You don’t laugh though; you’re all-business. ‘I’m not doing physics, Roger,’ you say. I hate it when you call me Roger; it seems so impersonal. I hate it almost as much as the fact that you’ve now adopted the American spelling of your name, replacing the ‘e’ with an ‘a’.

‘Don’t go,’ I whisper.

‘I have to go,’ you say. ‘I’m meeting someone.’

You’re bored of me. I know that. It’s a matter of scale, I think. I can’t get my head around America or the new you that inhabits it. It feels as large as the solar system to me. Why can’t you understand how distances make me feel?

‘I’ll walk with you,’ I say.

You just nod your head. But you don’t move. It is as though there is something more that you want to say. I know that feeling only too well, and so I sit in silence and let you compose yourself. In the silence, I become aware of a lonely bird singing its sad lament in a nearby cypress tree. Maybe he’s trying to tell me something about loss. Maybe he’s asking: ‘how far is too far?’

‘See that bird in the tree?’ I ask. I’ve given you ample opportunity to speak, but you just can’t find the words, can you? Well, let me do it for you. ‘Imagine that bird has a tiny flea riding in the feathers. If this bench is the sun, that flea is Mercury.’

‘What are you talking about, Roger?’ you ask, getting that look on your face.

I creak up from the bench and start to measure out thirty long steps away from you. Then, and with some triumph in my voice, I spin round and face you again, shouting: ‘Venus!’

Wearily, you climb to your feet too. You trudge after me as though wearing a ball and chain attached to your feet. But when you reach me, I notice the traces of a small smile playing on your lips. You remember this, don’t you? Our little games?

‘Earth?’ you ask.

I begin this crazy long stride as though I’m in Monty Python. Unbelievably, you start to follow; bouncing along as though you’re walking on the moon. You look so foolish! It’s so long since I’ve seen you not care about what anyone would think of you…

We move out of the park; Earth is on 108th Street and Mars is only a few more giggly moon-steps from there. We walk so close that our steps fall into sync; we’re both caught up in this current of desire for things not to be as they are. We are both mapping out our reconnection. But maybe I’m mistaken; maybe I’m reading too much into things. For there is a bit of distance between Mars and Jupiter, and your pace soon begins to slacken. By the time we reach Madison Avenue - the rough approximation of where you used to get bored when we used to play Planets – you’ve stopped the giggles and got that bored look in your eyes. Back then, you used to ask me whether we were nearly there yet; ridiculously, I’d always make you ask the question in a different way, not like all the other kids ask.

By 110th Street, even I’ve given up walking like an astronaut. It’s become all about the destination rather than the journey once more. But then you do something that is completely unexpected; you surprise me. Did you actually comprehend how happy it would make me when you stoop to pick up that dime from the floor or was it pure accident? ‘This is Jupiter,’ you say, holding up the dirty coin for me to see. I beam with pleasure; how perceptive of you! If Mercury is only a flea on a bird’s back, then you are right to scale up for Jupiter. Maybe we’ll make a Scientist out of you yet… although I’m not sure if that’s what you have in mind.

Along East 110th, much further down, we also find Saturn. I finger a button on your expensive duffel coat to show the planet’s scale, but somehow you don’t seem that enamoured with the game any more. We don’t talk much as we plot a course into the nether reaches of our solar system; turning right at Frederick Douglass Circle and then right again into West 110th Street. The discovery of Uranus should have cheered you up. ‘Your anus!’ you used to screech, loving the excuse to use a dirty word with impunity. Now though, you are dangerously quiet.

Neptune is on Morningside Drive and Pluto way out on Amsterdam Avenue.

‘Pluto’s not even classed as a planet any more,’ I say, trying to inject a little more interest into things again. But you don’t even respond. Please understand, love, how small I really am. I am the tiny little Pluto, orbiting your sun. You can’t even see me. I’m ice-cold from lack of your warmth. Hell, they’ve even changed my classification now, like you changing the spelling of our name.

‘And now, Lisa, do you know where we might find the closest star to the sun?’ I ask, before answering my own question as is my wont. ‘Well, if we were keeping to the same scale as we have just walked the solar system, it would be as far away as Los Angeles. Now do you see why I don’t want you to go?’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m still a child, dad,’ you say. ‘Los Angeles isn’t Proxima Centauri. That was just a silly little game we played years and years ago before you decided that your work was more important than your family.’

‘But don’t you see? It’s all about space,’ I shout, but already you are orbiting some new sun. A boy I’d hardly noticed before steps out of one of the proliferation of theatres and links your arm. He’s tall and broad shouldered and not at all grey. He holds you as I once did, so there’s no distance at all between you. You’ve only got eyes for each other, you and him, your Los Angeles boy.

And you never even thought to introduce me. As you float away through space and time I feel something break within me. My heartstrings have been stretched and stretched but now they have snapped. That is the distance between us, I think.

A.J Kirby is the author of three novels; The Magpie Trap (to be published in time for Christmas 2008), When Elephants walk through the Gorbals (which was third place winner in the 2008 Luke Bitmead Writers' Bursary competition from Legend Press) and Leap Year (which he is currently re-writing). His portfolio also includes the novella Perfect World and over thirty short-stories. Publication credits for his short fiction include Nemonymous 8: Cone Zero, Graveside Tales, Sein und Werden, Dog Horn Publishing, The Second Hand, Skrev Press, Underground magazine, Necrology magazine, Monkey Kettle, Golden Visions, and Champagne Shivers.

He was runner-up in the 2008 Huddersfield Literature Festival creative writing competition, and this year was also short-listed for the Cinnamon Press short fiction prize and the Mere Literary Festival prize. He is the current editor of Itchy Leeds Guide and am determined to make writing his life or his life’s work writing.

Cirkus

2009-01-18T02:27:00.000-08:00

by Helen Pletts

I can't understand the clown
but the red looks beautiful -
gold braid bitten into the fibres.

The lion tamers
(ticket collectors on Sundays)
have fallen under the gymnast's cloak
of sand dust.
I swear she kicked them as she left the ring
- their tongues pawing at her tights.
But she is the one snarling
at the broom boys
who left grit on the star;
sharp under her toes.

Side splits in the silk
part like a ripe red mouth
and the red swallows hard.

The drip of silver and turquoise,
the strip of air
lashes over the heads
of six black Russian stallions
and the smell of horse
straw-smart and welcome,
brings the rush of animal.

A camel dances the token Sahara Waltz -
her face a tea-sipping marchioness.
Fur dewlaps a-ruffling
she bows out like the horses.

And the faith of the straight-backed boy in blue
graces a stack of white wooden chairs
(no net).

If the nib of the pen goes down it usually starts in a poem. My subjects usually 'emerge' - triggered by small observations, in a way I have not yet been able to understand. I write every day and teach a creative writing class.

Tote

2009-01-18T02:24:00.000-08:00

by J. Boyer

One of the benefits of going to a writers conference is the tote you get, thought Plumly. Normally these were first-rate totes, as totes go, heavy cloth, good stitching, a logo that could knock your socks off, but that’s not what he had in mind by “benefit.” What he had in mind was that when the girl said, “Here is your badge, and here is your tote,” he got to respond, “Wow, that’s a pretty nice tote, is it free?” and she said, “Well, it’s included.” She was young and pretty, she might have been one of his students, and he didn’t want this small exchange to end before it had to, so he said, “The tote is included?,” not because he didn’t hear her or because he was unforgivably stupid, but mainly because when her hand brushed his own as she handed him his badge he remembered how much fun it was to say the word “Tote.” It came back to him in a flash, as if out of nowhere: Tote’s a pretty good word. It was better said aloud than said silently though. It wasn’t the kind of word you said to yourself. Silently, Tote could be just about any one-syllable word you only get to use occasionally, like “crash” or “nip” or “pontificate,” though “Pontificate” of course has more than one syllable. Said aloud though, Tote was over the top.

Try it. Say Tote.

Not like that. Say it the way Plumly just said it. Say it out loud.

See?

Plumly used to have an old 78 rpm record when he was growing up of Paul Robeson at Carnegie Hall singing Old Man River, a song that greatly benefits from the word “tote,” though there of course it has to do with barges and manual labor, and it’s not something you get free at a conference. Or get to say for no apparent reason.
Plumly remembered that his mother used to say “tote” and he probably used it once or twice himself when he was growing up, at the beach, say, as in “Mom, aren’t you forgetting your tote,” but Tote wasn’t a word he’d used for a long time and he was surprised by how welcome was the chance to use it in a sentence, as in, “That’s a pretty nice tote—for being free.” It was just one of those words, you know? It had some heft, and lately a lot of things in Plumly’s life seemed devalued of heft.

It was one of those words that made him think had he chosen a different career
or lived a different life he might have had the chance to say it a lot. Tote.

Right? Hear it?

When the girl behind the counter turned away so she could help others with their registration package, Plumly thought to himself it was a shame you couldn’t work a word as good as Tote into a casual conversation at least once or twice a day, every day of your life, you’d probably be the better person for it. But most of us aren’t living that life, we’re living lives where we find ourselves using words that aren’t much fun to say aloud, such as “perpendicular.” Now there, thought Plumly, is a word better kept to yourself.

Perpendicular. Paralegal. Paragraph. It must have something to do with all those Ps. They’re just no good on the tongue. Poets can probably think of a way to find some music in words like that. Not Plumly though. Maybe if he practiced. But then poets probably have a leg up in this particular case because Poet begins with a P, and they are always introducing themselves as “Hello, I’m Cynthia—or Aaron—or Nakeesha the poet.” Not that he’d ever actually heard a poet do that kind of self-introduction. How would it sound? They probably could if they wanted to though. Leave it to a poet to know better.

Face it, when’s the last time you heard some famous poet say something like, “Hello, I’m W.H. Auden, the famous poet”? Auden knew better. Too many Ps. That’s what made Auden as good a poet as he was. He knew that one P is one too many. But Plumly was willing to bet a full semester’s salary that Auden used the word Tote a lot. Plumly had never made a study of this, but he bet Auden included the word Tote in several of his poems. Auden probably saved these from publication, and only used them at his readings. If so, thought Plumly, smart move.

Plumly bet Auden said things to Yeats like, “Fucking great tote you’ve got there!”, just for the fun of saying it. That’s the kind of life he had. Tote came up a lot. Any time Auden felt like it.

No one should be a paralegal, if you asked Plumly, and it was risky to be too perpendicular, but that was another matter.

Tote. There it was again. He’d said it aloud. Completely out of nowhere.
It was taking on a life of its own as he walked toward the convention hall to see if his books were being displayed, and that was okay. He could think of ten
people right off hand who didn’t deserve the life they had, all of them his younger colleagues at the college where he taught, all of them sitting pretty, and if Tote wanted a life of its own, Sobeit, fine by him, have at it. Take the whole enchilada. You’re a lot more deserving than they are.

Tote. What could he tell you?

He was sorry now he hadn’t used a great word like Tote when he was still talking to his ex-wife, or with the Iranian man who owned the dry cleaners they used before she moved out and took an apartment of her own, or the paralegal they used when they went to revise their wills once they parted. And not something awkward either, like “Repeat after me: Tote.” Though that would have been okay for the Iranian man. He was just learning the language.

It’s probably not going to happen though, thought Plumly. His was the sort of life right now where he only got to say the word Tote once in a while, mainly when he went to conferences, which was probably just as well. He was old enough now so that he had more totes in his closet than he had life left to live, and he’d grown smart in a way that could only come with age, and filling up your closet accordingly. Plumly was smart in the way that made him jump at the chance to say the word Tote whenever he got it, because there was no way to be sure when it would be the last chance he got, Tote. See? He wasn’t taking any chances.

Tote. He said it again, and for no apparent reason. Pausing before the door to conference hall, he thought, It’s not like I think I’m getting a second chance at life after this one’s behind me, so I’m making the most of the time I have left.

“Here, hold my tote for a minute, will you, I’ve got to use the restroom,” he might say to a stranger, or, “My tote has a side-pocket, that’s better than the last one I got,” or maybe he’d be speaking to one of his poet friends later in the day and he’d say “Fucking great tote you’ve got there.” He’d see if they got the literary reference.

When he headed home in a couple of days, he’d probably be taking the great tote he got at this conference onto the plane with him. If so, he was planning to keep it on his lap. Maybe it would start a conversation. Who knew? In the meantime, he’d try to think of some alternative life where you don’t have to force things by putting a tote on your lap. Or maybe he’d just wait until a few things clear up in this one.

J. Boyer teaches in the Creative Writing Program of Arizona State University.

Apologies

2009-01-14T22:55:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin would like to apologise for the delay in publishing issue one. Life, as it turns out, sometimes gets right in the way of the things we want to do - this magazine being one of them. I'd like to thank all contributors for their patience, and assure you that issue one will be online ASAP.

Issue 1 now closed

2008-11-26T00:03:00.000-08:00

Submissions for issue 1 are now closed, and successful authors will be notified in the next few days.

Many thanks to everyone who sent work in.

Templar Poetry Pamphlet & Collection Competition 2009

2008-10-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

This Open Poetry Competition, now in its fourth year, offers contemporary poets writing in English the opportunity to have their work published in short pamphlet, collection and anthology formats. The four winning pamphlets, along with a selection of the best individual poems selected for inclusion in the competition anthology, will be published at the 2009 Derwent Poetry Festival in Derbyshire in October 2009.

The poems and poetry submitted may have been published previously and may be submitted simultaneously for consideration elsewhere, subject to the conditions detailed in the Competition Rules and Conditions.

Four winners will be chosen by the Judge, Tim Liardet, and will have their pamphlet collections published by Templar Poetry at the 2009 Derwent Poetry Festival. Each of the four winners will receive £500, ten complimentary copies of their pamphlet and the option to submit a full collection for later publication.

Up to forty poets will have their work selected for inclusion in the annual anthology. They will receive fifteen complimentary copies of the anthology. The four winning poets and all the anthology poets will be offered the opportunity to read at events held at the Derwent Poetry Festival in October 2009. In addition, ALL writers submitting work receive a complimentary copy of the anthology (RRP £8) in October. Pamphlet and Anthology poets, along with one guest, will enjoy complimentary access to all Festival events.

The Competition results will be posted on the Templar Poetry website in late August along with full details of the Derwent Poetry Festival Programme.

Paper Pumpkin

2008-10-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to CompletelyNovel's print-on-demand service, semi-annual anthologies of Pumpkin will be available in print. Each contributor will receive a free copy, and will be able to order more directly through Pumpkin's page on CompletelyNovel.

CompletelyNovel is currently running a private Beta trial; you can apply to join on the site's homepage. More details will be added as they become available.

“Writing pretty”: Creative Writing and Academia

2008-10-16T01:52:00.000-07:00

“Is that, like, writing pretty?”

The above, coupled with an expression of utter bewilderment, is an actual response to my stating that I’d studied creative writing. And it isn’t an isolated incident. Perhaps most responses are slightly more eloquent, but they all share the bewilderment and a slightly suspicious attitude towards this clearly made-up discipline that I claim to have gained a Masters in. My standard reply, arrived at by necessity, after numerous vain attempts to give an accurate description of the content of an academic degree in creative writing, is now: ‘It’s learning to be a writer.’ Which, as you might imagine, generally gets me into even more trouble, by throwing me head first into the “But can writing actually be taught?” debate.

My dad is a poet, and I am a writer. Words run in the family, and I don’t believe it’s coincidental. I cannot do math to save my life, but I can write. And there’s something inherent in that, if not always hereditary. But talent is a very tricky term, which we nonetheless feel free to throw about, arbitrarily. There are genetic predispositions to certain diseases, genes that decide our gender and the colour of our skin, but we have yet to identify a gene for writing, painting, or doing simultaneous equations. And until we do, the concept of talent will remain an abstract one. But talent, nonetheless, however tentatively you use the term, is what you need to have, in order to actually be a writer. Everyone may well have a book in them, but it’s most probably a bad one. And if this sounds elitist, it’s because it is: not everyone can be a writer. Just like not everyone can be a scientist, an accountant or a builder.

But, if it all comes down to that elusive talent gene, what’s the use of an academic degree in writing? Steinbeck didn’t need one to write East of Eden; Dickens, Tolstoy and Kundera didn’t study creative writing. Correct. But Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan , and Tracy Chevalier did, while Malcolm Bradbury, Andrew Motion and Rose Tremain all taught on EUA’s Creative Writing MA. Even if you view education as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, there is much to recommend a degree in creative writing. First of all, there is the sense of community that you immediately gain, something that writers are generally starved of. The reclusive author stereotype may be a cultural construction, to an extent, but it’s not that far from the truth: writing is a lonely occupation. And feedback is an important part of the writing process, as is reviewing, redrafting and editing – all of which you practice in the workshops that constitute the core of any course in creative writing. For the vast majority of aspiring authors, whose work has only ever been read by friends and family, gaining a readership of their peers and tutors, who will not offer blind praise but constructive criticism, is worth the tuition fees in itself. Writing courses encourage you to be creative, but also teach you how look at your creative output critically. You study the technical and formal elements of writing, so that you can then recognise, apply or subvert them in your own work. In the first year of my BA, I had a brilliant and very frightening writing tutor who was obsessed with spelling and punctuation, and took a liking to me because I could manage both. It may sound elementary, but you’d be surprised. There is so much more to writing than sitting down at your desk, invoking your muse of choice, and pouring your soul out. There are big things and little things and all the things in between, that may have never occurred to you outside that classroom. Just like scientists, accountants and builders, writers need training, too. Because talent may just as well translate into another unread manuscript on a publisher’s slush pile as into a literary masterpiece and, because the odds are skyscraper-high against the latter, we need all the help we can get.

So: can writing be taught? Perhaps not. You can teach the theory, all the bits and pieces that surround it, but perhaps you can never touch upon the core that is the ability to write. But there is something very valuable that a degree in creative writing can teach you: how to be a writer. This is the single most important thing I took away from the four years I studied creative writing. By turning what was previously an interest, a hobby, a thing you were “good at” into an academic pursuit, the object of your studies, by applying yourself to it daily and joining a community that recognises it as a valid occupation, by openly declaring your commitment to it and, yes, even by answering questions like ‘Is that, like, writing pretty?’, slowly, day by day, your perception of the act of writing and your own role in that process begins to shift. Slowly, you begin to think of yourself as a writer, to separate what you do from what you are. Slowly, you replace the phrase “I’m a barmaid/student/temp” with “I’m a writer”. I’m a writer. And the fact that I have a degree in it is neither here nor there, except, if I didn’t, I might still be there, serving pints of Carling and waiting for inspiration to strike so I could finish chapter one, rather than here, with a completed manuscript on my desk, composing letters to agents in my head and enjoying interesting conversations with people who think creative writing is the same as calligraphy.

And another thing: everything else aside, signing up for a degree in creative writing means a whole year (or three, in the case of a BA) of doing what you love. Isn’t that a little self-indulgent? You bet it is. And I, for one, would indulge again any time, without a moment’s hesitation.

(Copyright 2008 Daphne Kapsali)

Related links:

MA in Creative Writing at UEA
MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London

Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in writing are offered by a number of UK universities. Information on undergraduate courses can be found through UCAS, while the National Association for Writers in Education has compiled a catalogue of writing courses offered by higher education institutions in the UK.

This article was written for, and published on CompletelyNovel, a new site bringing together writers, readers and the publishing industry. CompletelyNovel is currently running a private Beta trial for a limited number of users. You can apply to take part of the site's homepage.

Call for submissions - Pumpkin 2

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Submissions are now being accepted for issue 2 of Pumpkin, due to be published in Spring 2009. Deadline for submissions to issue 1: April 1st 2009. Please read the Submission Guidelines carefully before submitting any work for consideration.

If you have any questions, please email pumpkinsubs@gmail.com.

Submission Guidelines

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Pumpkin welcomes submissions of fiction (short stories, novel excerpts up to 2,000 words) or poetry, from writers of all ages and backgrounds. All submissions must be in Word (.doc) or plain text (.txt) format, and accompanied by a brief author bio (150 words max). Submissions must be the author's own, unpublished work. Five pieces (per issue) will be selected to be published on pumpkin, and the authors will be notified by email. Authors whose work is not selected for inclusion will not be notified. Only one submission per author per issue, please.

Submissions are now being accepted for issue 2 of Pumpkin, due to be published in spring 2009. Deadline for submissions to issue 2: April 1st 2008.

Pumpkin will also publish original articles on writing, submitting manuscripts to agents and publishers, and other topics of interest to writers. Article submissions are always welcome (ignore the issue deadlines); please make sure you stick to the appropriate document format (.doc or .txt), and include a brief bio. Label all article submissions "Article" (i.e. in the email subject field) to avoid confusion.

Email submissions and questions to pumpkinsubs@gmail.com.

About Pumpkin

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Pumpkin aims to establish itself as a showcase for the best new writing on the web, while providing valuable support and resources to writers, new and established. Pumpkin will be published quarterly, with each issue featuring five exceptional pieces of new writing.

Each issue will be available online, and also in print, through CompletelyNovel's print-on-demand service.

Submissions are open to writers of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, published or unpublished, but the work itself must be previously unpublished, either in print or online. And that's all we ask. Please check our Submission Guidelines before sending in your work for consideration.

Pumpkin is run by writer Daphne Kapsali, founder and editor of this is it, the online literary and contemporary arts magazine, which ran very successfully from 2003 to 2006, attracting a loyal following of about one thousand unique visitors per issue. This is it was taken offline in September 2006, as web hosting costs and the volume of work involved in maintaining it became unmanageable. The clean, no-frills blog format of pumpkin was chosen deliberately, to avoid the difficulties encountered in running this is it, and to allow the focus to stay exclusively on the writing.

(Relevant ads by Google have been added to generate some much-needed funds for future projects, such as print anthologies and writing competitions. I hope they are not too intrusive.)