Shelley Harris

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Diversity and New Stories – subsidised Creative Writing Workshops for BAME writers

‘There are stories out there we aren’t hearing.’ (Kamila Shamsie) There’s been much talk recently about diversity in publishing (viz: the lack of it), and many creative initiatives to rebalance the scales, from blogger Naomi Frisby’s #ReadDiverse2016 to essay collection The Good Immigrant (ed. Nikesh Shukla), crowdfunded in three days thanks to enormous popular support (read more)

How to be a human

What can the ‘most human human’ teach us about writing and reading? On Monday’s PM programme*, the writer Brian Christian (disconcertingly hailed as ‘the most human human’ for reasons that will shortly become clear) talked about how he’d acted as a ‘human confederate’ in 2009’s Turing Test. In this annual event, a panel of scientists makes (read more)

This Woman Can

This is a post, not about books or reading or writing, but about some thoughts I’ve had since seeing this wonderful piece by Daisy Buchanan. Daisy’s post is about abundance – an abundance of love which gave her an abundance of confidence, which gave her an abundance of sex and food and pleasure and an abundance of (read more)

An absolute corker of a tutored retreat

Very, very occasionally in life you get exactly what you want. Most of the time it doesn’t happen that way: someone’s eaten the last bar of Green and Blacks Salted Caramel chocolate, and the only tea available is the heinous decaff. But sometimes things work out. I used to be a teacher and got a (read more)

timey-wimey: a letter to my (former) self

Dear Shelley-from-the-past, Put down that Crème Egg and listen to me: this is important. I’m writing to you from 2015, via an ingenious time-travel mechanism, the specifics of which I can’t be bothered to concoct. I won’t tell you anything about 2015 because if I did it would irrevocably alter the history / future of human (read more)

Now! The All-New Plan-O-Matic!

Last week I had a Virtual Retreat at home, in an attempt to recreate the Retreats For You experience at a time of low cash and even lower childcare options. I also needed lots of my own things around me – as you will see below – for the work I hoped I’d do on (read more)

In-Between Days

I’m living in that magical transition between books, a period I fantasised over and over again when the writing got tough in Vigilante. Between books is a wonderful time. You can justify a moment of pride at finishing the last one, a bit of air-punching, a couple of lie-ins. You know – sort-of – what (read more)

Thirst

I’m so excited to have Kerry Hudson guesting on my blog today. The genius behind the Womentoring Project, her debut novel Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma won the Scottish First Book award and was nominated for a slew of others. Yesterday her second novel, Thirst, was published. (read more)

False beards and wicked women: what writers really need #3

What do writers really need? A mentor, that’s what. They need a seasoned professional to offer the voice of experience, whether it’s in matters technical (‘that structure may not carry the story; have you thought about this one?’) or personal (‘Yes, you can do it. Yes, you can. Here’s a bit of cake. Now go (read more)

What writers really need #2

Since my blog post on what it is that writers really need, I’ve been thinking about the things which reliably support my own work. I thought I might blog about them from time to time in the hope that, if you’re a writer too, they might support yours. I’m starting with the idea of a (read more)

Hitting me in a soft spot

I first heard Kate Bush when I was eleven. I saw her on Top of the Pops doing Wuthering Heights and two days later I was at Clifton Records in Bourne End, spending my birthday money on her album, The Kick Inside*. God, I loved that record – everything about it, even down to the (read more)

Monkeys with tea: what writers really need

There’s been a lot of debate in the past couple of weeks about the usefulness of creative writing MAs, after author and MA tutor Hanif Kureishi’s claim that they are a waste of time (asked whether he’d have enrolled on one, he bracingly replied: ‘that would be madness’). The Grauniad on Saturday ran a three-page (read more)

blah blah Proust

I experienced a strange little slap of memory today. I stood in my chilly bedroom, in a town where the floodwaters are still receding, against a soundscape of my kids gently carping at each other. I spritzed a neckful of a cologne I hadn’t worn for years and – bam! – just like that it (read more)

The Second-Worst Question

What’s the second-worst question you can ask a writer? Almost all the time, it is: ‘What are you working on at the moment?’* It sounds like such a benign enquiry (so thoughtful, so engaged), such an obvious conversational gambit. But for most of a book’s life – really, up until the point that it’s ready (read more)

Quick and dirty

A quick and dirty post this, but one I’m very proud of. It’s pretty terrifying to talk about a work-in-progress, and when my publishers asked me to pitch my next novel* they very cannily did it at a cocktail party (and bought the drinks). There were lots of other Weidenfeld & Nicolson authors there pitching their own (read more)

Books for Christmas

Perhaps I’m biased, but I don’t think you can beat a book as a Christmas present. Where else do you get such bang for your buck? I may not be able to take my friends to France, but I can give them Hugo’s Notre Dame of Paris. They can go to Prague, New York and (read more)

Pick a side

If I presented it to you as a possible plot, you’d shoot it down before the first draft: woman campaigns for a single female image (aside from the Queen’s) on a British banknote. Woman succeeds. Woman is subject to repeated threats of rape and murder. Where’s the motivation, you’d say, who would do that? It (read more)

Don’t Panic

I was fourteen and the world was going to end. Four minutes, that was all we’d have, and then we’d be atomised: nothing between us and the bomb except a stupid understairs cupboard or a stupid kitchen table. Every time the Soviet Union and the States went head to head over Afghanistan, say, or Nicaragua, (read more)

Fashion! (Turn To The Left)

I will not lie, I love dressing up. I love colour and texture; I’m a sucker for embellishment, embroidery and beads. I love over-the-knee boots and necklaces that look like breastplates. In my less confident days I dressed to be ignored (a face-covering fringe as a teenager, dark colours so I could blend in), but I (read more)

Red Prose Day

I’ve been trying to decide how I could contribute to this year’s Red Nose Day – and I’ve come up with an idea I’m really excited about; it’s a plan which will benefit Comic Relief and help out an unpublished writer into the bargain. Here’s the deal: on Red Nose Day (Friday, March 15th), writers can (read more)

Mea Culpa

It’s been a very long time since I wrote anything on this blog – two and a half months, to be precise – so this post starts with an apology for my neglect. I’m sorry. In my defence, over the past weeks I’ve kept nearly-posting. I’ve nearly-posted about: Equal marriage (again) The different phases you go (read more)

A Day In The Life

Inspired by this lovely blog post from Carolyn Jess-Cooke, I’m presenting my own writer’s day in pictures. Here goes… It starts with coffee, and with proper respect accorded to my muse… No, not Jane Austen herself, but my trusty Jane Austen Action Figure, with poseable limbs, writing desk (out of shot), and a (read more)

Writers’ Wives

In recent weeks we’ve been treated to two spousal accounts of what it is to live with a novelist. There’s this, from Deborah Orr (wife to Booker shortlisted Will Self) and now these comments from Ian Rankin’s wife that, during the most trying period of each novel’s creation, the role of his family is “Chiefly… (read more)

Mug’s game

The results of that lesser-known literary prize, the Guardian’s Not The Booker, were announced yesterday. It’s a gong won by popular ballot, which these days is a dirtier business than it sounds. To win, authors solicit votes by any means necessary: Twitter, Facebook, direct email. This year the longlist (very long indeed) contained both male (read more)

whistle while you work

I wrote to a musical accompaniment this week. It rarely happens, because I seem to be very aurally distractible (as well as distractible in any number of other ways), so generally speaking my writing room remains a quiet place. Occasionally I’ll break that rule; if one of my characters is listening to a piece of music (read more)

boring

Like many authors I tweet, but I tweet less when I’m working towards a deadline, and not just because I’m avoiding distractions. The fact is, writing can be really quite boring to talk about. When it’s going well it involves sitting down at a desk and writing things and staring out of the window and (read more)

Thrive

Stephanie Butland is a good laugh. She’s warm, funny, insightful, and is also responsible for the best cinnamon and white chocolate cupcakes I’ll ever encounter. I quite fancy encountering those cakes right now, to be honest with you. Stephanie’s better known for other things, however: for the blog-turned-book How I Said Bah! to Cancer, which (read more)

Gorn my son! (What the Olympics taught me about writing)

I’m not quite sure at which point I bought into the Olympics wholeheartedly, but it was probably somewhere around the time I turned to my husband during the opening ceremony and said: ‘Blimey! That’s the best Queen impersonator I’ve ever seen…Oh My God!’ Or maybe it was when the house rose up to reveal Tim Berners-Lee waiting inside, or (read more)

squirrel!

Before we start, I’d like to take a moment to address my agent and editor, should they happen upon this blog post: Hi, Jo and Kirsty. It’s great to see you here. I hope you’re both well. I grabbed a few spare minutes to write this blog post. Other than that all I do, really, (read more)

for your consideration

My To-Be-Read (TBR) pile is so big that it’s not a pile at all, but several shelves in a downstairs bookcase. Here is part of it: This is what happens when your ability to read is outstripped by a compulsion to acquire. I sometimes fantasise about redressing the balance, taking a few months off writing to (read more)

Fifty Shades of… oh stuff it, I’m not making a lame Book Porn pun

What follows is either a fascinating post about book classification, or a self-deluded account of high-level work avoidance strategies – take your pick. Either way, I have found My Adventures In Book Porn to be more exciting than bestselling women’s erotica. Which is probably a bad thing. Last weekend, I spent a pleasurable few hours (read more)

in which i start a twitter trend

Yesterday began badly. I woke up with a cold, and knackered to boot. Then I found two terrible reviews of Jubilee on Amazon. Normally, this would not faze me unduly; I’m a voracious reader, and passionate about my right – and everyone else’s – to love or hate any book we damn well want. I (read more)

Silly Love songs

This is a post about brilliant love songs – and also about the preponderance of bad ones. It occurred to me, as I was reading the excellent Someday Find Me by Nicci Cloke, that love is something we don’t often represent well. Maybe it’s the nature of love itself – its choppy mix of the mundane and (read more)

The Other Half of Me

As I write this, we are in the throes of a truly British summer which means, of course, that the sky is the colour of anthracite and high winds have forced the British sailing teams to take a break from their pre-Olympic racing. It’s the perfect moment to curl up with a book which will (read more)

Richard and Judy (in which i react to good news )

It’s just been announced that Jubilee is a Richard and Judy Book Club choice for Summer 2012. This is incredible / amazing / gobsmacking / brilliant / wonderful – delete as applicable. (No! Don’t delete anything! They’re all applicable!) These are the things I did when Orion’s Fiction head, Susan Lamb, rang to give me (read more)

Book at Bedtime

I am utterly thrilled to announce that Jubilee has been chosen as a Book at Bedtime on Radio 4, airing from Monday, May 28th. For me this is a piece of particularly good news, because Radio 4 and I have a very close personal relationship; it’s been going on for years. Several places at my (read more)

special agent

I met my literary agent Jo Unwin over coffee at the York Writing Festival in 2010 and I have to confess that, had I known who she was, I would never have dared to sit next to her. This isn’t because she’s not lovely (she is very lovely), but because back then, agents were a (read more)

something for the ladies

Imagine my surprise when I opened my copy of The Bookseller on Friday and discovered a new category of fiction: Intelligent Women’s Reads. I’ll just run that by you again: Intelligent Women’s Reads. Now, I’m going to be optimistic here and operate under the assumption that the adjective is being applied to the books, rather (read more)

cover story

When I told people that Jubilee was going to be published, the first thing they asked was: ‘Do you have a cover design?’ or – in a variation on the theme – ‘Do you get to design the cover?’ I’ll deal with the latter question first. No, I do not design my own covers. If (read more)

Freaks!

My best friend Loz has a superpower. No – really. She’s been able to pass it off as Emotional Intelligence to protect her secret identity, but she actually reads minds; it’s quite astonishing. When teaching finally gets the better of her, she and I will throw aside our conventional lives and tour the villages of Britain (read more)

Life! Death! Prizes!

Steve May is a very good bloke and a cracking writer. I first met him on a ‘second drafts’ course at the Lumb Bank Arvon centre, where he and his wife Caron were centre directors. All of us on that course were deep into our manuscripts, all ambitious for publication. On the first night we (read more)

ziggy stardust and the spiders from buckinghamshire

Today, a blue plaque was unveiled in Heddon Street, London, to mark the spot where David Bowie posed for the cover of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I was too young to be caught up in the mania which followed, and in quite the wrong place anyway (it would be another year before (read more)

Free Nelson Mandela! (and other arguments for equal marriage)

My mom brought me something fabulous the other day, a relic of my past she’d found when going through a box of old letters. Here it is: It’s a badge I wore pinned to the lapels of a large and shabby secondhand coat towards the end of the eighties. In common with many (but (read more)

let the commas breathe

I spent much of Tuesday holed up in a bunker studio in Clerkenwell, watching the enjoyable – but undeniably surreal – process of Jubilee becoming an audio book. Before W & N chose the actor to read it, they’d asked me: ‘What does Jubilee sound like? Whose voice is it narrated in?’ The real answer (read more)

ain’t gonna work for you no more

There’s been a fair amount of guff talked over the past week about the monarchy and its relationship with Britain. It comes, of course, as the Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee and – to someone well-versed in the rhetoric of the 1977 Silver Jubilee – it sometimes seems that little has changed in the last (read more)

good enough

Liz Fenwick has written very generously here about Jubilee, about pushing herself as a writer, and about the necessity of pressing your skills beyond the point of ‘good’, to reach ‘superb’. She’s no slouch at that, as it happens, landing a two-book deal with Orion (The Cornish House is out in May). At the end (read more)

In which I show you pictures of my launch party

What a cracking night it was! And the best thing about it was all the lovely, lovely people who came to celebrate with me. I wanted the party to be packed with friends, family, and those who have helped Jubilee on its way over the *mutters a large figure* years it took to write and (read more)

glamorous

In a recent tweeted exchange, author Kate Mayfield and I identified the two topics guaranteed to spark interest in Twitter’s community of readers and writers . Was it, perhaps, the essential skill of redrafting? It was not. Was it the magpie process of story-making, filching from here and there to bastardise into a narrative? Nope. Was (read more)

Really Good Salted Caramels

I’ve been spending some time on the comfy sofa at Jen Campbell’s blog discussing Jubilee, photography, and really good salted caramels. Jen’s a kind of literary multi-tasker; she’s a prolific blogger on all things bookish as well as a poet who, in a recent feat of endurance, wrote 100 poems in a single weekend, raising thousands (read more)

Happy and Baffled

How does it feel to have your debut novel published? Bizarrely, after all the emotions I have had to capture in words – yearning, love, fear and joy– this is one of the harder things I’ve had to express. I wrote something about it for this blog yesterday. It was terribly erudite, referencing Peter Pan and (read more)

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