Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

Written by Amy King at www.vidaweb.org In a year kicked off by the Republican party fighting the Violence Against Women Act and a nationally-broadcasted song reducing Oscar-noteworthy actresses to “boob shots,” VIDA takes our annual look back to see if this regressive tenor is reflected in the treatment of women in literature in 2012. We also eyeball how the 2012 Count stacks up beside numbers from the years preceding . As always, the charts tell their own stories, whether publishers and editors listen or not. And now their histories are showing.   While it would be incredibly easy to begin by lambasting national publications like Harpers, The Paris Review, The New Republic, New York Review Of Books, Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic and The Nation for their gross (& indecent) neglect of female writers’ work, I fear the attention we’ve already given them has either motivated their editors to disdain the mirrors we’ve held up to further neglect or encouraged t...

Over the past two weeks I have entered seven writing competitions. They have been for flash fiction, short stories and novels. I haven’t dared add it all up but I must be nearing a £50 spend by now. When I began, I read, re-read, edited, read again, worried, fretted and finally sent it in. Now, several days and submissions in, I am getting quicker, slicker. Although I have had no feedback and no results yet, the very act of entering has increased my confidence (I have done it, therefore I can) and, delightfully, caused me to rediscover my joy in my writing. I had reached a hole, a wall, the sheer rock face that many of us hit at some point and had decided to put my current novel in a metaphorical drawer and start researching something else. I love research. I love making notes.  I love finding things, hitting tangents and finding something else. I love the freedom of letting my mind wander through the information I am gathering and finding its own route and its own story. But, on ...

As well as working out what to write, why we want to write it and how and when we’re going to do so – which is no small feat in itself – we also need to decide where to write. This may seem the least difficult item on this list, but for many people finding a place to write is a constant challenge. I heard of one established writer who opted for living on a houseboat with his family. Personally I can think of few things less conducive to writing than living on a houseboat with one’s family, but there you go. One friend of Cafe Aphra told me recently that she has taken to sitting in her car during her lunchbreak at work and scribbling down whatever she can in her notebook between bites of her sandwich. Personally, I have found airport departure lounges to be unparalleled spots for writing. Bizarre, perhaps, but true. So what are the most important characteristics of a good writing spot? For me, they would probably be: light, calm, space, a view and other people in...

My world is increasingly filled with people who write. Perhaps this is only a matter of perspective: I remember the early days of my first pregnancy when London was suddenly crammed with pregnant women and babies, even though the official demographics show no sudden increase in births that year. Now, the streets of Cambridge are awash with writers: every backpack carries pages of a half-written memoir; every laptop opened on the coffee shop tables contains a novel which is nearing completion; the neighbor pushing his son on the swing at the park is a New York Times best-selling author. On subway journeys and in line for the bus, I eavesdrop shamelessly and conversations are filled with references to publishers and editors, allusions to dramatic devices, and bald statements about preferable narrative styles. I share my work across a range of communities. Each Monday I spend a few hours with a collection of ladies who write exquisitely formed memoirs and encourage me to write a nove...

I love a challenge. And so, it seems, do many others. Over 500,000* people took part in NaNoWriMo last month and, even more excitingly, many were those that took part in our Café Aphra November Writing Challenge. To recap, we decided to hold our own writing task whereby you, the writer, set your own goals, targets or aim and work towards it with the support of others online who were doing the same. There was an instant camaraderie from the unified act of writing. Within the first few days of cold November, our Facebook ‘Likes’ doubled and we had people from all over the world – Europe, the USA and the Middle East – joining in. People chatted to each other, asked for advice, gave support. It was exactly what we had hoped to achieve – the seed of a community of writers. Writing is a solitary activity. Only you are writing those words onto that page or screen and this can cause a degree of loneliness. Some writers thrive on this, others struggle. During my first year of full-time wri...

Inspired by NaNoWriMo , a wonderful project run by the Office of Letters and Light every November since at least 2001, Café Aphra have decided to set our own challenge for the month of November. Many of us are stuck with our writing, either through a lack of time, inspiration or discipline. Some of us need a kick-start to just get going again, to break through those barriers, blockages and general blahs that are stopping our fingers from writing those words. Café Aphra proposes that whoever wants to join us in our November Writing Challenge can pledge to write a certain number of words every day for the 30 days of November, or alternatively can set themselves a similar goal. Such as, for example: “to have finished chapter 3 by the end of Week 1 and to have written chapter 4 by the end of Week 3”.  Whatever works for you and makes sense for your writing right now. Our idea is this: It doesn’t matter what we write. It might be a short story, flash fiction, an exis...

                     THE MOTHER OF THE MUSES,   MY FRIENDS AND MNEMOSYNE Mnemosyne - The Mother of the Muses   Mnemosyne,, the Mother of the Muses, has been on my mind a lot recently as I search for inspiration for my first novel or collection of short stories. Plot, structure, characterisation, pacing etc are one set of difficulties but there is another fundamental question that causes me to seize completely.  That stumbling block is purpose.  What is it exactly that I am trying to achieve with my writing?  This is not the first time I have wondered about the purpose of literature.  This topic has occupied my thoughts for many years. Rewind 10 years or so ago to a casual phone call with an old friend from university when we ventured rather close to philosophy when I asked her what she thought the purpose of literature was. After all, ...