Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a good couple of weeks? I’m writing to you from deepest Cornwall with rain lashing at the window and three damp dogs at my feet. There’s a fire on the go and a chicken in the oven for dinner. The days since Christmas have dissolved in a haze but now regular life beckons - it’s time to head back home to London and dive into the year.

First, a quick look back to early December and our zalon with guest author Zoe Gilbert discussing Unconventional Storytelling. Zoe talked about “fiction that poses questions and where the reader plays a part, the sorts of stories that surprise us in structure and form, like a puzzle box to unpack or apply your own meaning.” It was an inspiring session and if you’d like a chance to catch up you can watch it here on demand here. We looked at how particular stories might take an unconventional form or shape and the opportunities such an approach might afford a writer. As promised there’s a reading list of the books mentioned below.

Zoe shared a writing exercise to try out - ‘Borrowing to Write Something New” or ‘Smooshing’, in which you take an idea or a thing you already know you want to explore and “smoosh” it together with something that you find either via research or eavesdropping or looking at the news. In other words by finding something that forces your idea (or the thing you want to write about) into relief, it can channel some creative problem solving in ways to deal with both things.

I love Zoe’s attitude to writing and creativity, “there has to be some pleasure involved…and learning…Find a voice or a rhythm or a structure that makes your heart sing and go with it!” If you’re in need of a new year dose of enchantment and beautiful writing, do read her latest novel, Mischief Acts (the audiobook is excellent!).

With thanks to Zoe for a brilliant session. Please join me online on Monday 23rd January, at 7- 8pm, for The Art of Memoir with Lily Dunn. Lily’s recent memoir, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling was included in the Guardian’s list of best memoirs of 2022. She also teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University and alongside Zoe co-runs the wonderful London Lit Lab. More zalon news for 2023 to follow soon and workshops too - I’ll keep you posted. 

Thanks for reading!

Kellie

Links & Refs:

Zoe Gilbert

Zoe’s list: 

Books that tell a big story through a series of short stories:

Olive Kitteridge and Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout - life of one woman

A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House by Jennifer Egan - entwined lives illuminating an era

Ulverton by Adam Thorpe - a village over several centuries

Villager by Tom Cox (newish) - a village over a generation or so

Summerwater by Sarah Moss - separate lives converging on one day

Books that tell a story through fragments or flash stories:

The Employees by Olga Ravn (interviews)

Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk (lives of a community shown in fragments)

Bottled Goods by Sophie Van Llewyn (novella in flash)

Books that play with time (jumping between eras, mixing periods, reversing etc):

Thursbitch and other books by Alan Garner (switches between ancient and modern)

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey (starts at the end and runs in reverse)

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wild (one timeline goes in reverse)

Other books mentioned:

Legend of A Suicide by David Vann (linked short stories to make a whole)

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (fragments)

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (plays with time)

I Remember by Jo Brainard (every sentence begins with I Remember…and builds a whole autobiography)

Grief Is a Thing With Feathers (part memoir, part novel, part sound-poem) & Lanny (lots of different voices & experimental with typeface?) by Max Porter

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Ducks Newburyport by Lucy Ellman, Bluets by Maggie Nelson, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders, and finally the not so unconventional but totally wonderful Rebecca & My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier