I'm not much of a swan but I like swimming

On Thursday my friend Steffi Pusch's exhibition of photos opens at the Ashdown gallery in Forest Row. This isn't one of her photos - it's snap of me swimming in the Medway on a roasting hot day a couple of weeks ago.

Swimming in the river is one of my most favourite treats. We cycled up over Speldhurst and Bidborough - sharp hills both - and down to Leigh where we threw our bikes down and jumped in. It was contagious - some passing walkers flung their clothes off too and dived in to join us.

Anyway, that's a diversion. Steffi's photos of the river are beautiful . I'm really glad she's showing the sequence she took for our Old Stile Press book, The Swimmer and to help her celebrate her opening, I'll be reading from the story on Thursday night.

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!

1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes - STOP!

I've been putting this off - but it's time to face the page and read The Swimmer aloud to myself to see how long it takes. I'm reading at the launch of Best British Short Stories on Tuesday and I have five minutes. And I ideally should stop reading at a point which will send the crowd (crowd?) into a frenzy of dissatisfaction so that every one of them rushes to the table at the back to buy a copy.

In fact I'm less nervous of the reading than of the mingling before and after. Will there be anyone else there willing to confess that - while they read obsessively - they can rarely remember the plot or characters of anything they've read?

Or that while they were out for a walk this afternoon they experienced a sudden and disconcerting urge to reread Tales of Brambly Hedge? Where did that come from?

Proof I'm not perfect

Salt sent the proofs for The Best British Short Stories for me to check - hugely exciting to see my story there, and only slightly less so when I spotted a typo on the first page which I'd missed when it was first printed in the Warwick Review. Still, at least I found it before they printed the book - it's due out on 15 April, more details here http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/anth/9781907773129.htm.

I also had to check my biog in the back of the book - a pretty quick job as it's so short: "SJ Butler is a freelance writer and editor living in Sussex. 'The Swimmer' is the first short story she has published." Alongside the lists of novels, collections and illustrious magazines everyone else has published in, it looks a little sparse! Still, I'm thrilled to be alongside people like Hilary Mantel and Adam Marek, both of whom I've seen at the Small Wonder festival at Charleston and admired from afar.

Adam Marek read an utterly beautiful story about a father and son at Small Wonder last year, quite unlike the surreal stories in 'Instruction Manual for Swallowing'. I haven't seen it published, and in a way that's one of the joys of the festival - just occasionally we hear a story that feels as though it's being read once in its life, for us alone. Michel Faber read one he'd written specially for the festival, which he told us he didn't plan to publish, and it's still quite clear in my mind, all the brighter for not being written. Mind you, I'd love to read it and experience it again.

The Swimmer: hot off the press!

Today my first short story is published - I sent it to The Warwick Review and was stunned when Michael Hulse, the editor, accepted it as it's only the second time I've ever sent a story out.

If you'd like to read it in full, I'm afraid you'll have to buy a copy of The Warwick Review at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/warwickreview/ - but to whet your appetite, here's a taste from the opening paragraphs:

The Swimmer

The alders at the river’s edge stand motionless in the midsummer heat. In the fields, the twisted cattle beans are black. A car buzzes out of sight, its engine muzzled by the thick air. Above it all, the sky is a bleached starling’s egg blue. Three weeks of windless sun weigh down on the fields: nothing moves except the water, slow, steady, a slick of olive green pouring away from her.

She sits at her desk in the back room gazing out at the river. Where it rounds the first bend there’s an eddy as the current twists out into the middle, pirouettes and continues on its course. The sun catches the ripples, sprays them silver for a moment. The light is so bright that she can hardly bear to look at it. 

            She is so hot.