A full time writer, editor, and writing teacher, Vanessa Gebbie is widely published. Her credits include top awards from literary competitions including Bridport and Fish Short Story Prizes among some forty other short story competition successes. Many of her prize-winning stories are gathered together in her debut collection, Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt Modern Fiction 2008). A second collection of micro-fiction, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, is forthcoming.

Gebbie is an experienced teacher of creative writing, working with literary festivals, with adult groups and with young people. Her work in the community has included tutoring groups of marginalised adults and has led to two anthologies:  Refuge, stories from refugees and asylum seekers, and Roofless, writing by the homeless. (QueenSpark Publishing.)

She is contributing editor to Short Circuit, A Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt Publishing 2009) and contributor to the text book A Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (Rose Metal Press 2009). She is founder-editor of the specialist ezine, Tom’s Voice, and was also sub-editor of Cadenza Magazine.  

Gebbie is Welsh. She is married with two sons and lives in East Sussex, UK. She is also a reader and a final judge for short fiction competitions and has just accepted an exciting invitation - to teach creative writing at Stockholm University, Sweden.

R&T:  Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Vanessa. So, how does it feel to hold WORDS FROM A GLASS BUBBLE in your hands and to know many others will read your story collection? And, have you curled up and read GLASS BUBBLE as if it were written by someone else?

Gebbie:  The first time I saw my books, in a box delivered from the publishers, I sat on the floor in my hallway and just looked at them. I couldn’t quite believe it. Here was a beautiful book, hardback, a stunning cover, and my name on it. It felt totally unreal. I lifted one out and turned it over and over, just feeling the weight of it. I even smelled it!

There was also sadness. My mother was a librarian for most of her life, and she died several years before I even started writing seriously. She would have been very proud –

Now, it is eighteen months later. The book is now out in paperback and according to the publishers, sales in those eighteen months have pushed the book into their top 20 all time sales. That feels extraordinary. But at the same time, I am now on to different things – a second collection coming out soon, a textbook as well, a novel. GLASS BUBBLE will always be an important foundation stone, but the building is growing higher by the day.

And your last question here is great! The answer is yes. I do lots of readings in public, and I always try to approach a story as though it is new to me. And I do sometimes think – ‘wow. Where did that come from? Did I really write that?’ And er- that doesn’t always mean I think it is good! We move on, and sometimes I see something I would like to change.



R&T:  Your short fiction has won many awards. How does the publication of GLASS BUBBLE compare to this feeling?

Gebbie:  I have been lucky – most of the stories in the book have won awards like Bridport, Fish, Willesden Herald, and others. I guess it is all part of the same thing – the book and the competition successes were all saying ‘you are doing this thing right’ – and that is comforting, actually!

The writing world is a funny place . . . lots of the time you can’t trust the feedback you get. Editors sometimes know the people they publish, (and that doesn’t mean the writing isn’t fine, but it does make you question) and reject perfectly good work from slush piles. What I AM saying is that writers should not see rejects from magazines as an indication that their work is no good. It is far more complex than that.

So success in anonymously judged comps, for me, were strong validation. The work won. Not Vanessa Gebbie. And that distinction is important – whereas in open subs to mags...how do we know it’s not the name that ‘wins’...if you see what I mean?!



R&T:  Yes, I do see! Vanessa, your characters are intriguing, interesting and complex. Do you create your characters from experience, individuals you know, strangers you watched as you went about your own life, or as metaphor, or perhaps all of this?

Gebbie:  Hmm. Well, I suppose all my characters come from my imagination, which must be a melting pot of all my experiences to date – but I very very rarely base a character deliberately on anyone. I find it is remarkably hard to fictionalise reality, and anyway, the majority of real people aren’t fundamentally that interesting, are they?! I have never seen the point of making up yet more people like the ones who live next door . . . .

But yes, sometimes, a person glimpsed from a train window or across the aisle on a plane will catch my eye for some reason. Usually because there is something about them that makes me feel something. Sad, usually. Certainly intrigued. Character is based on feeling, I think. The feeling that begins a story is a ghostlike thing. Slowly the ghost takes on a more solid reality of the duration of the work, then fades away again when it is finished.



R&T:  Is GLASS BUBBLE, or any of the stories within it, a letter to someone?

Gebbie:  Lovely question. And yes, two definitely are, although I have never thought about it until now. Tough, really. I always get knotted up inside if I read either of those out.



R&T:  How do you write? Do you outline, wing it, or somewhere in between the two? 

Gebbie:  I never outline anything. That may be a mistake! I may ask myself questions, in my head, usually ‘why?’, ‘why?’, ‘why?’ but it is in the actual act of writing that something will take shape and lift off the page or screen. It is becoming increasingly hard to do though. For some reason I am stuck in a limbo where I think I ought to know what something is before I tackle it, and although I know that is crazy, it is just there. I’ll get over it!

Metaphor? (I’m answering something you asked up there . . .) Well, sure. I may see something that I think works well as a metaphor and make a mental note to use it. But usually, if I do that, it is so obvious and clunky that I take it back out at editing stage. The best metaphors are the ones that rise up unbidden from your subconscious so that you don’t even know they are there until someone reading the work points it out to you!



R&T:  So you did your job! Do you have any favorite stories or characters? And, do you have any stories or characters you struggled with, and why?

Gebbie:  I love Finn Piper, the strange recluse who makes bird noises in ‘Words from a GlassBubble’. I love Eva and Connor Duffy, and the VM – the little plastic statuette of the Virgin Mary who doesn’t speak grammatically and is something of a control freak! I love Dodie, the shop assistant in 'Dodie’s Gift '. And Tommo Price – the modern-day version of Doubting Thomas who won me a Bridport prize. I’d love to buy him a drink or two.

I love Qissunguaq the little girl in ‘The Kettle on the Boat’. And Spike, the young adopted guy who wants to find out his real name before he gets married, in ‘Cactus Man’. That story is my own, up to a point –and the only story that is in any way based on a true incident.

Struggling- again, the title story from the collection –WORDS FROM A GLASS BUBBLE. That took me over two years to get right. I couldn’t ‘get’ the characters, and the story wouldn’t come right until they did.



R&T:  Besides writing fiction, what else are you up to?

Gebbie:  Well, I’m quite busy. I was commissioned by my publisher a year ago to compile a textbook on the short story. I am just doing final proofs and that will be launched in November, if all goes well. It’s called Short Circuit, a Guide to the Art of the Short Story and is a compilation of 24 specially commissioned essays by writers who have not only won the top prizes for short fiction, but who also teach their craft. Stunning. Some fabulous endorsements have already come in, from the organisers of The Bridport Prize among others!

I am 90,000 words into a novel-type-thing. And I am applying for a grant to work alongside a fantastic novelist for the final shaping/polishing process.

I also have a collection of micro-fictions coming out in early 2010, called Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures.

I am teaching – at festivals, and at schools. Although I have to ration that – it’s nice to earn the cash but it uses such a different bit of the brain, I can’t do too much or I will turn into a teacher who writes now and again - not a writer who teaches now and again!



R&T:  Vanessa, what do you feel is your greatest achievement so far? Either as a writer or as a woman, or both?

Gebbie:  That’s a very hard question to answer. I think the book, the teaching, the textbook – passing on my passion for writing – is a great thing to be doing.

Sometimes I think that finishing a single story I feel is OK is a great achievement. Sometimes I think that sitting down to write a paragraph when I didn’t think I could . . . that is an achievement too!

But know something – probably my best achievement is bringing up two lovely sons together with my husband, Chris. We all want to leave something good behind us, I think. And knowing that they are kind, strong-minded individuals who have a deep sense of right and wrong – that’s great. (They think their mother is a little crazy – and hey. I’m not going to tell them otherwise!).



R&T:  When your reader turns the last page of GLASS BUBBLE, what do you want to imagine they are feeling, or what do you want the reader to take away from the experience?

Gebbie:  Well, the last story is a toughie. It would be very hard to read another after that one, which is why it is at the end of the book. And although it is tough, it ends with a strong and hopefully uplifting ‘message’, if you like. Again (back to my answer above) it has to do with what we leave behind us.That we exist at all is a miracle – not to lose sight of that. (I feel that deeply, for other reasons!)

The book is not a sweet read –the stories aren’t simple easy yarns written to pass ten minutes on a train, they were written for me, because I had to write them. Then they won awards, because they made the judges feel something . . . so they worked as fiction.

I hope the readers have been moved to feel something, too. Whether it is sadness, anger, empathy, joy – something. I can’t think of anything worse than writing words that do not touch the reader in some way.

I hope the reader feels the book was worth spending a little time and money on. I hope they will see the world in a slightly different way?

And I thank them for spending a little time with my work. That is always an amazing thing.



R&T:  You were given up for adoption at birth. Did this influence any of the themes in GLASS BUBBLE, particularly the themes of loss, belonging  and displacement, or alternatively place and home?

Gebbie:  Absolutely. You can see the same emotional tones and colours running through the words, in very different stories. They are my themes, that’s what drives me as a writer. I suppose I would like to make people understand what being displaced makes you feel . . . and can only do it this way. But also, the ‘existence being a miracle’ thing-that is deeply rooted. So everything is a celebration – even if the occurrences may be ‘sad’ rather than uproariously jolly. There is always a flash of humour here and there, and that’s just me, I think.



R&T:  In “Kettle on the Boat” is Qissunguaq a familiar story to you, and is this little girl familiar to you?

Gebbie: Of course. I know many adopted adults – and one thing that they will all tell you, if pushed, is that they live with a deep sense of bewilderment at being left. But of course, she is not ‘me’, simply a manifestation of how I feel, illustrated through a fictional character.

I wrote that story while staying with a writing tutor a while back – an extraordinary event. He was trying to explain the power of writing to images, and I was just looking through a pile of books full of photographs – National Geographic, things like that. Feeling nothing.

He had said to wait. Wait until you see something you can’t cover up by turning the page...then suddenly, there was a photo of a small boat on a lake, an Inuit family. A small girl looking utterly lost and bewildered, looking straight out of the photograph at me.

I cried.

Sitting there on the floor of this guy’s house, looking at a photo – I cried. He said nothing, except ‘remember that feeling’.

Later, in bed that night, I sat and wrote that story start to finish. Polished a little . . . but there you go. Characters come from feelings – I think I said that earlier. I didn’t have to ‘make her up’ at all, she was just there. Obviously a case of channeling part of myself, that part which can still express utter bewilderment at being left behind.

It is interesting – I had a stable and loving upbringing, and was very close to my parents. (They are the ones who brought me up.) But I STILL felt bewildered...with no reason at all. Then years later (actually, in 2008) I discovered that my birth parents married three years after giving me away. They had four more daughters. Maybe part of me ‘knew’ that. Who is to say? I’ve now met three of my sisters, had a brilliant holiday in California earlier this year to visit the one who looks so like me it is scary. Life, eh? It’s a funny thing.



R&T:  GLASS BUBBLE is full of stark, beautiful, and heartbreaking images, sights, sounds. How do you feel about your writing, the language you craft? Does the writing, language, come “easy” for you?

Gebbie:  Thank you! Those words are lovely.

But does writing come easy?? Aaaagh. No. Sometimes I am crying as I write. (see above). Sometimes I am laughing to myself. But I am always feeling something. I am never just penning a yarn to fill a few moments . . .

Language is something different. It seems to shape itself to the work, and change as it is needed. The novel is very specifically voiced, and it is tough to sustain it. It is interesting to find out if I succeed in the end.



R&T:  How are your friends and family reacting to the publication of your book?

Gebbie:  My family is certainly proud of what I do. They are also annoyed by my obsession with writing. They are bemused by my imagination. My younger son is deeply embarrassed by his mother writing an anal sex scene in 'Irrigation'. Ha! But mostly, they are supportive.

None of my ‘older’ friends (those I have known for years) are writers. And there was, I think, total incomprehension from many at the way in which one has to close oneself off and focus if you want to get anywhere with writing. Not easy. And many of them don’t like what I write. ‘Why don’t you write something longer? Shorter. Happier. Historical. Erotica. Horror. Crime. Romance????’…Sorry chaps!



R&T:  Vanessa, do you have any advice for writers?

Gebbie:  It’s very very hard to dole out advice to writers, as though writers are all some amorphous blob who all react to the same thing the same way. We are all different, all do things differently. At least I hope so! Who wants to be a clone of anyone else – what joy is there in that? But here’s a try:

•Be yourself. Write what only you can write and no one else. Find that – it is in there somewhere.
    
•As I said somewhere above – don’t take rejects from magazines to heart and think they mean  your writing is poor. Learn from them. Learn about the market, how editors work. Embrace rejects – it means you are a writer, getting stuff out there.

•Read. Lots. Anything. And read with a pen nearby…you won’t write well unless you feed the gift.

•Although there are some superb MA/MFA courses out there, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO  HAVE AN MA OR AN MFA TO WRITE WELL ...that is deliberately incapitals. I AM shouting. You may need one to get published in some journals, run by MFA grads who were themselves taught by MFA grads, and who will go on to teach MFA undergrads ...get the picture?

•Write. Write anything. Something will happen, I promise. Maybe not every time, but most. But sure as eggs is eggs, it won’t happen if you don’t write.

•Work hard. Give and receive honest feedback, based on the words, not the writer. Leave your ego at the door if you work in a writing group.

•Don’t listen to the writer with the loudest voice – they probably have the loudest ego.

•Actually, after a while, listen if you like - but don’t act on any advice but your own instinct, and maybe one close person who has your best creative interests at heart.

•Please be very careful who you work with. If you feel anything is not right, stop. NOW! Example: I once worked in an online group for a year with a writer who seemed a decent man if  slightly ‘creepy’- a bit Uriah Heepish online but supportive, chatty, open and generous. So we all  thought! Then we met to discuss editing a collaborative project, and I was discomforted to find that he was nothing like the writer I ‘knew’ online. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t look me in the eye. I felt very awkward – and I ought to have pulled the plug right then. But I didn’t. A few months later it was discovered that this man had misappropriated the work and ideas of colleagues in more than one writing group. And my own. I ended up taking legal action to protect my work from him, spending hundreds of pounds I didn’t have.

Please be very very careful, and trust your instincts. Your work is precious.



R&T:  Finally, where can our readers find WORDS FROM A GLASS BUBBLE, and what are you working on next?

Gebbie:  The usual suspects:  Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, the publisher at www.saltpublishing.com. Alternately, contact me via my website www.vanessagebbie.com if you’d like a signed copy.

The next collection is Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, due out in the spring. A collection of micro-fictions, totally different!

And the text book –Short Circuit, is also available from the publisher, and from Amazon and so forth. It’s been endorsed by The Bridport Prize, by The Fish Prize, by the National Association of Writers in Education –it will fly, this one! There’s nothing like it out there.



R&T:  Thank you, Vanessa, for taking time to do this interview with me. I am wishing you success with your lovely book.

Gebbie:  And many many thanks for spending the time on this interview, Kathryn. I appreciate it hugely. Your questions were excellent. Very thought-provoking, and I enjoyed the process.

Visit Vanessa Gebbie's website

Look for Gebbie's short story The Comeback in the Rose & Thorn Winter Issue.

Kathryn Magendie is co-editor/publisher of the Rose & Thorn, author of Tender Graces. Visit Kathryn at her blog, twitter: @katmagendie, and her website.