The Swimmer - The Old Stile Press

Almost two years ago I wrote my first short story.

I'd begun plenty of stories before, but when the going got tough, I'd always abandoned them - I was unable to close my editorial eye long enough to finish an imperfect beginning. And of course most beginnings are imperfect. They need work, revision - but only once you've reached the end.

This was the first one I'd seen all the way through to its conclusion, and it was a  scary process. I had to force myself keep going, to refuse to let myself put it aside and start another.

So when I finished I was ecstatic - but I'd no idea if the story was any good. I was far too close to it and the process of writing it.

I showed it to Susan Wicks, who's almost entirely responsible for me coming to believe that I can write fiction. She read it and suggested strongly (that's about as strong as Sue gets) that I send it out. So I did, and it was rejected. She suggested I try again, and Michael Hulse at The Warwick Review published it, in the December 2010 issue. I was overwhelmed - I'd been a jobbing writer for years, but writing fiction was something else. It matters too much to get wrong, but Michael's approval meant I could turn away from my decades of self-imposed fictional  silence.

'The Swimmer', that first story, is about a woman addressing her fear of going down to the river that she watches every day, of stripping off and slipping into the water.

It's not about me - though me and the river in the story have a long history - but maybe me and the woman were in some way addressing our fears together.

I couldn't have predicted what happened next - Nicholas Royle at Salt chose 'The Swimmer' for The Best British Short Stories 2011, where it sat alongside writing gods like David Rose, Hilary Mantel and Michele Roberts.

I almost froze at this point - could I ever write another story people liked as much? But I got writing again, and more of my stories were published.

I told my friend Steffi Pusch about 'The Swimmer' - she's a photographer who takes fabulously instinctive pictures - and we wondered if we could make a book together, blending my words and her pictures. I showed Steffi the place on the Medway where I'd set the story, and she spent sunny days down there creating images that capture perfectly the heat and intensity of the story.

We started to look for a printer - we both love letterpress - and each came across The Old Stile Press, who make utterly beautiful hand printed books. I didn't think they'd be interested, because they're publishers rather than printers, but Steffi was optimistic and wrote to Nicolas and Frances McDowell, describing our joint work.

To our amazement they wanted to publish our book, and last week they received the first bound copy - that's their photo of it at the top of this entry. Doesn't it look gorgeous? I haven't received mine yet, but I couldn't wait to celebrate its publication here.

Nicolas and Frances have written a lovely blog entry about the book at The Old Stile Press Blog with more pictures, showing off Steffi's photos and the fabulous typography.

Thank you Steffi, Nicolas and Frances - and Michael and Nicholas - for backing my first short story!

Photographers but no photos

I'm definitely an amateur photographer, and not a very good one at that. I use a point and click camera, and can never remember the important things like depth of focus, so my photos are pretty much the result of luck.

Because I sometimes get to work with photographers, I know that a good photo is almost never down to luck. Though being in the right place at the right time helps, you also need to have a great eye, amazing reflexes if things are on the move, and lots of technical knowledge. Good knees are handy too - they all seem to spend a lot of time crawling about on the ground.

It's not about the camera - a decent photographer will take a fabulous shot with my camera phone and I'll take an utterly unmemorable one with the very best equipment.

I tremble whenever an ill-advised editor hands me a camera and asks me to take the photos myself - last time that happened was at a conference, and I was expected to take photos of people chatting over coffee, but the only lens they gave me on the huge and complicated camera was a vast telephoto so I spent the coffee breaks pinned against the back wall of the hotel trying to get far enough away from my targets.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the websites of four photographers I've worked with and whose work I really like. Mike Pinches and I have done lots of work for Sense (the deafblind charity) together, and have just finished a feature which I'll be shouting about here in a few weeks, I hope. He's quiet and calm, perfect attributes in a photographer, I'd say. Just take a look at his portraits.

Mike's assistant on our photo-feature was Mark Cocksedge. He's also just assisted at the The Blue Oblique shoot of David Hockney for the RA - and his own work's great too. I love his Sunday league football refs especially.

Steffi Pusch is a quite different kind of photographer. Where Mike and Mark's work is clean and bright, Steffi likes to muddy the waters. Her shots are moody, full of hidden elements, emotional. She often works with a pinhole camera, making complex images. She and I have been collaborating on an illustrated version of my story The Swimmer which The Old Stile Press is bringing out this year. I love her portraits, but perhaps the photos of hers I love most are her series, Soul Flowers.

Roelof Bakker came to me via The Swimmer too, which he read and liked, so he asked me to write a story to go with one of his photos - a great treat. He has some fabulous photos of Dennis Severs House on his site, which reminds me that I want to go there this year.

It seems a bit strange, talking about photographers, but showing none of their pictures.But there's a reason for that - their photos are their work, and they're all copyright and I wouldn't dream of infringing it. So you'll just have to go to their websites, I'm afraid. Sorry.