Vanessa Gebbie: 'Your voice, your stories and how you tell them, are just as important as anyone else’s'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
31st Aug 2023
Vanessa Gebbie is the award-winning writer of three collections of short stories: Words from a Glass Bubble, Storm Warning and A Short History of Synchronised Breathing, a collection of flash fiction, Nothing to Worry About, and a novella in flash, Ed's Wife and Other Creatures. Her novel The Coward’s Tale was selected as a Financial Times Book of the Year. She has won awards for short stories, flash fictions, poetry and travel writing, is an experienced creative writing teacher and mentor, and is the editor of Short Circuit: Guide to the Art of the Short Story. She also contributed a chapter to the Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction.
Vanessa worked as an editor on our Writing Short Stories course for many years and we're thrilled that she is the tutor of our four-week Writing Flash Fiction course with weekly Zoom teaching.
We spoke to her about writing competitions and her advice for budding writers who want to try their hand at writing flash fiction.
When did you know you wanted to be an author?
Thank you for having me here - a bit like a super party invite!
I’m not sure I ever did consciously think ‘I want to be an author’, really. I wanted to write - and the two are different, aren’t they? I’d always written - stories when I was a teenager, and dreadful poetry when I was at University, aimed at my long-suffering boyfriends. Even when I was really tiny I wrote - I ‘invented’ a newspaper, aged six - it ran to two sides of folded office paper brought home by my father, and was written and illustrated in blue wax crayon. One issue only…
But to get back to your question - when did I know I wanted to have a book out there with my name on it? Hmmm. When I had been seriously learning to write well, for a few years, and reading loads. I read Austerlitz by W G Sebald back in 2002, and loved not just the story but the originality of it - the way he doesn’t blindly follow the ‘rules’ set by others but makes his own, and (vitally) they work. I knew I wanted to try to do this too.
Flash fiction is celebrated for its ability to convey deep truths and universal human emotions in just a few short paragraphs. Trying to tell a story of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development is no easy task. Do you have any advice for budding writers who want to try their hand at writing flash fiction?
Yes. Flash is akin to poetry in that regard, or can be. My advice is to read masses of good flash fiction and creative non-fiction flashes. Practice concision in your own writing. And don’t think flash fiction is a simple matter of picking up a paragraph from a longer piece of work, and calling it a flash! It might be - but it probably won’t.
An excellent anthology of flash fictions is the recent Fuel Flash Anthology, edited by Tania Hershman. A collection of first prize winning flash pieces going back some fifteen years. Over 70 prize winners. All amazingly different, in form, style, content. Just to underline that there is no single piece of advice for anyone wanting to have a stab at a writing competition! I will be suggesting this as a most useful book - a resource for my forthcoming Flash course for CBC.
Your stories often challenge our perceptions of what is ‘normal’ and this theme is central to your chapbook, Nothing to Worry About, published by Flash: The International Short-Short Story Press in 2019. What draws you to the theme of ‘normality’ in your writing?
Such a good question. I think I have always lost patience with people who judge others, without finding out what leads them to act/be /think as they do. And so often, life is enriched by how others are. Add to that my love of irreal or surreal writing. The occasional touch of magical realism. So long as it works… And the old advice for writers: ‘Write what you want to read’, seems right here!
You have run many sell-out writing retreats over the past few years. What do you most enjoy about running these retreats? And do you also find them inspiring for your own writing?
Yes, absolutely inspiring. I enjoy just being with other writers, actually - it is uplifting. Writing can be a lonely old business. Teaching-wise, I love sharing what I can, what I have learned about the craft of writing from experience. It is a hugely important part of what I do now. Residential retreats are utterly amazing, and I love doing those, but getting away is not always possible for writers. Online courses, such as those CBC offers, can be just magic. I work really hard to make sure everyone in the group gets as much out of it as if they were in the room with me.
Your stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio and have won awards including a Bridport Prize, a Fish Prize, and a Willesden International Short Story Prize. Do you have any advice to share with the aspiring authors reading this who are thinking of entering a writing competition?
Absolutely. Read. As much as you can. Write, as much as you can, while firming up how you like to write, and what you like to write. Don’t be afraid of learning. Be as good a writer as you can be. Seek quality feedback from trusted others who know what you are trying to do. Preferably, not your best mates, or family, who will just tell you you are wonderful.
Offer quality feedback yourself, on the craft exhibited in anything your colleagues show you - analyse, let them know precisely where it isn’t working for you. But don't try to rewrite -‘why don’t you have this happen…?’ it’s not your story.
Be your authentic self - don’t try to copy anyone else’s style. Your voice, your stories and how you tell them, are just as important as anyone else’s.
Read work that has won - many good competitions have past anthologies of winning work. See what the standard is (apart from having a darn good read!). Check your work minutely. And if you don’t get placed, or on the long-lists or short-lists first time, don’t think that you aren’t any good. It’s not a precise science.
Choose your competition with care. Make sure it is bona fide. Make sure, if you win it, it is worth having on your bio. Pick ones with named judges, where possible.
Believe in your work, check it over again, and if you really think it is competition material, as opposed to good for an excellent publication - send it out again.
(Oh and - if you happen to know the work of the judge, please don’t send in pieces of work that are ‘like’ theirs! Who wants to read a hundred versions of what they’ve done already? Judges want freshness, zip, quality.)
You’ve also been a judge for several writing competitions including the Chalk Circle Short Story Competition and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. What makes a piece of writing stand out when you’re reading competition submissions?
Freshness, zip, quality - from the start. A great title. A compelling opening of a piece of work. A spark. The writing has to shine, obviously, but I look for the promise of a good story to come… something different. Intriguing.
We’re so excited about the Writing Flash Fiction course. What is it that makes flash fiction so special to you?
Me too - I am absolutely thrilled to be running the very first Flash Fiction course for CBC.
As a reader, good flash fiction is wonderful. Short, sharp and echoey. It isn't easy to skip from one to the other - a good one has you thinking for a moment, pausing before you can start another.
For the writer in me, flash is indispensable - for so many reasons. Firstly, it is a form that is very natural. And very old. It has been around for centuries, although maybe not with this name.
It is something we can all learn to do, and which can be itself, or can inspire and become part of something bigger. My own novel The Coward’s Tale began as apiece of flash fiction which won a competition. That, with work, became an important part of a short story, which went on to do well, too. And that story, with work, became an important part of the novel, which would not have been written at all, without that first flash.
What I call the flash process is an interesting one, too. I will be showing everyone how to approach their writing in this way, to open up creativity, to banish the ‘writers’ block blues’. There is so so much to flash! It has hidden depths...