{"id":462,"date":"2019-01-30T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/host2021.temp.domains\/~nationo0\/?p=462"},"modified":"2019-01-30T12:00:27","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T12:00:27","slug":"flash-is-powerful-when-its-specific-an-interview-with-angela-readman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/01\/30\/flash-is-powerful-when-its-specific-an-interview-with-angela-readman\/","title":{"rendered":"Flash is powerful when it\u2019s specific: An Interview with Angela Readman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the second in a series of interviews with this year’s National Flash Fiction Day anthology<\/a> editors and micro fiction competition <\/a>judges! This week, \u00a0Santino Prinzi<\/b> is in conversation with micro fiction competition judge and Costa Short Story Award winning author,\u00a0Angela Readman<\/strong>. They talk about Angela’s recently published debut novel, and Angela offers tips for writing brilliant flash fiction…<\/p>\n

Santino<\/strong>: Welcome, Angela!\u00a0Your debut novel, Something Like Breathing<\/em>, has just been published by And Other Stories. Congratulations! Could you tell us a little bit more about your novel?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong>: Hello, and thank you! It\u2019s about friends who live on an island, Sylvie and Lorrie, growing up in the 50\u2019s. It starts with the words, \u2018I\u2019d tell you about Sylvie, but you wouldn\u2019t believe me.\u2019 I didn\u2019t think I was going to write a novel when I wrote those lines, to be honest. I\u2019d hoped it would be a short story. I\u2019d had some lovely support for my story collection Don\u2019t Try This at Home<\/i> and really wanted to do another, but the characters wouldn\u2019t let me. I found they all had so many stories within their lives, from a mother obsessed with Tupperware, to a grandfather who runs a distillery and refuses to wear matching clothes. I had to keep writing to find out who these people were. They kept on surprising me.<\/p>\n

Santino<\/strong>: I can’t wait to read it! Now,\u00a0some people argue that writing short stories and flash fiction is a \u201cgood warm up\u201d for writing a novel, which potentially ignores the different skills and qualities required to write these different forms. What are your thoughts on this? What freedoms or restrictions did you feel when writing Something Like Breathing<\/em> that you don\u2019t experience writing flash fiction?<\/p>\n

Angela:\u00a0<\/strong>I don\u2019t like the idea that flash or short stories are practice exercises for writing something longer.\u00a0 <\/span>It sounds like the short form is somehow less valid. I don\u2019t buy into that. Flash is its own art form and it\u2019s amazing.\u00a0 <\/span>Novels are completely different. They both have their own challenges and aren\u2019t trying to do the same thing. When I write flash, I\u2019m after a glimpse of something, perhaps something I don\u2019t understand instantly. It\u2019s like catching something out of the window of a speeding car.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Something Like Breathing by Angela Readman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With a novel, it\u2019s more like being invited in to the house of a stranger. There\u2019s space to look around and really get to know them. It was fascinating. I loved being able to see the characters grow over years in their lives. I found the challenge was there\u2019s no Off switch when you spend that amount of time with characters. It feels like you carry them around with you wherever you go. I\u2019d be in the supermarket and suddenly wonder if Sylvie likes tomatoes. I didn\u2019t anticipate that. It was pretty intense.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Santino:\u00a0<\/strong>Many of your stories offer a sense of surrealism cemented in the normal every day, for example, your story \u2018Attack of the Robot Grannies\u2019 in last year\u2019s anthology feels both otherworldly and of this world. Is blurring the lines of possibility something you enjoy doing in your writing?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Angela:\u00a0<\/strong>I love blurring the lines of possibility. I wouldn\u2019t really describe my work as magical realist, it\u2019s probably more realist magical, or everyday surrealism or something. The work\u2019s grounded in the everyday, but anything could happen there. I hope it can anyway! I\u2019ve written realist work, but I\u2019m drawn to the strange. I\u2019m not sure why. I think it\u2019s something to do with a sense of limitation. I often write characters who seem limited by their location, status or circumstances, ordinary people with ordinary lives. I hate the idea that our opportunities should be limited though, whether it\u2019s by where we live or social status, or whatever, so things that seem impossible always creep in.\u00a0 <\/span>The women in Attack of the Robot Grannies had such boring office lunches they just needed those grannies.<\/p>\n

Santino:\u00a0<\/strong>It sometimes feels like writers are under pressure to always be putting words on the page. Are there any other activities, cultural or otherwise, that you feel can be just as helpful to a writer?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Angela:\u00a0<\/strong>There\u2019s a sense we should always be writing, but there\u2019s only so long anyone can stare at a screen. It\u2019s useful to do something completely different sometimes, like going to a museum or art gallery, standing still and really<\/i> looking at something. I also started making things with felt last year. I wanted to try a craft I\u2019d never tried and stick with it for a year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something about accepting you don\u2019t know anything and are just trying something out that can be freeing when you come back to writing. Rather than abandon work, or feel it should be perfect instantly, some of that feeling of just giving it a whirl is brought to the page.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Santino:\u00a0<\/strong>You won our very first National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction Competition and you have judged thousands of micros for us. What are your top tips for authors who wish for their micros to shine?<\/p>\n

Angela:\u00a0<\/strong>It has been a real pleasure to read so much flash. There\u2019s no one way to write it. The joy is flash can be anything, traditional in structure or more experimental. It\u2019s so surprising! The most common mistake I see is trying to fit too much in and generalising to fit it all in. Flash is powerful when it\u2019s specific. It doesn\u2019t need to explain itself. Trust your readers, with something so short it\u2019s amazing how far they\u2019ll come with you. Choose each word wisely and let that do the work. Write your flash, leave it, then go back and edit. Then edit again. Just to be sure, do that again until there isn\u2019t a word you could change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0Angela Readman<\/b> is the winner of the first National Flash Fiction Day competition. Her short stories have since been winners of The Costa Short Story Award, The Mslexia Story Prize and The Anton Chekhov Award for Short Fiction. Her story collection Don’t Try This at Home<\/i> was short listed in The Edge Hill and won The Rubery Book Award. In January 2019 her debut novel Something like Breathing<\/i> was published by And Other Stories. She also writes poetry and is published by Nine Arches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN for this year’s National Flash Fiction Day Anthology and Micro Fiction Competition. Submissions close on 15th March 2019. For more information, please visit our Anthology<\/a>\u00a0and Competition<\/a> pages.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are also trying to secure funding to offer free entries to\u00a0disadvantaged and marginalised writers. If you would like to help us do this by donating entries, please contact us at\u00a0nationalflashfictionday@gmail.com<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the second in a series of interviews with this year’s National Flash Fiction Day anthology editors and micro fiction competition judges! This week, \u00a0Santino Prinzi is in conversation with micro fiction competition judge and Costa Short Story Award winning author,\u00a0Angela Readman. They talk about Angela’s recently published debut novel, and Angela offers tips … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,11,29],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthology","category-blog","category-competitions","category-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}