It was great to hear Sara Hills read her story, A Cock Among the Bathers’ brilliantly at the flash Fiction Festival flashfictionfestival.com on July 13th, just a couple of weeks after she won first prize with it in our June 2024 Award.The photograph shows Sara in full flow. Below she tells us more about the history of her story and how and where she writes. Plus we have a picture of Samson, her flashfiction-inspiring dog, some tips on writing a winning story and a little writing prompt for you at the end if you want to enter the current Award (or anything else). Early-bird discounted entries end this Sunday, 11th August. One entry £7.50, Two entries £12 via Paypal or card.You can save paypal receipt and enter by the deadline, Sunday October 5th. Matt Kendrick is judging

Q & A with Sara Hills

• I believe your marvellous and unusual first prize winning story, ‘A Cock Among The Bathers’, came from a SmokeLong Fitness prompt. Can you tell us more about that and how you arrived at the version which won Bath Flash at the end of June?

I love learning and being pushed out of my comfort zone, so I can’t heap enough praise on SmokeLong for its workshopping space. My story started as a response to one of their first-draft sprint challenges in early 2023, which essentially said something like ‘go wild, nuts and more nuts, but do it in 400 words and use 3rd person future tense’. It’s a quick turnaround for those challenges, and I work well to a deadline and tight constraints. But I procrastinated long enough that I found myself on the day of the deadline, like a crazy person, trying to draft something in the car on the way to and from the Cézanne exhibit at the Tate Modern. And what a joy that exhibit was!

When my messy draft won senior editor feedback, I was so pleased. The advice I received was to expand the story and dig into the relationship between the characters a bit more, which was a fair point. However, the more I tried to do that, the further away I kept moving from the rhythm and urgency of the original piece and the less I liked the story. It languished on my computer for over a year, and when the Bath deadline came around again, I decided to try excising 100 words from that original draft while keeping as much of the art, urgency and playful-nuts-ness of it as possible. I didn’t for one second think it had any chance of winning Bath—you should have seen the shock on my face when the announcement went up. But, of course, it delights me to no end to have a story about ‘The Bathers’ featured in Bath flash.

• Michelle Elvy, the Award judge , makes this remark in her comments about your story, when she talks about the story’s many layers:
  ‘The interplay between veneer and substance is built moment by moment.’ Is that something you generally think about when writing — a moment by moment compression?

Michelle Elvy’s comments just blew me away. I’m so thankful to her for seeing what I was trying to create with this story. And to be honest, I don’t know that I consciously think about layers when I’m drafting; I feel like my best writing comes when I’m just at play on the page and not thinking about craft at all. But I do think a moment by moment subtext is how I see the world, if that makes any sense. I’m always scanning the environment for emotional information, whether that’s because of my personal background or as a parent, I don’t know. But it does tend to show up in the writing process as my brain scans the story environment, trying to uncover meaning. I’m not happy with a story until I figure out what it’s about, until it feels layered and emotional. And those layers come into sharper focus through editing: examining word choice, objects, metaphors, compression, etc.

• You were recently part of a panel on writing a winning story at the Flash Fiction festival talking about another story. What are the main things to consider do you think, in addition, maybe, to your answers above?

First and foremost, delight on the page. Be brave, reckless and emotional—try to surprise yourself. And then in the editing stage, use your entire toolbox. Interrogate your verbs. Is your title interesting? Will it catch the judge’s attention and does it inform the story? Does the character’s voice shine through? As to whether a story places or not, that’s anyone’s guess. If you’ve applied your craft, then it’s worth taking the chance. Oftentimes, it’s the story you don’t expect to get anywhere that resonates most with readers and judges. So give your work the benefit of the doubt and send multiple stories, especially if it’s a competition that supports places and journals you love. Competition deadlines can be a great impetus for getting out of your own head and getting that story finished. And, in the end, if you’ve created a story you’re proud of, a story that lodges in your throat or makes you laugh, isn’t that a kind of winning already?

• What are you writing currently?

Nothing, actually. I’ve been quite busy this year with various other projects, grateful to be able to contribute back to this wonderful community of flash writers, and I’m finally taking a minute to gather myself. To refill the well and consider the best way forward in growing my craft or what niche I might fill in the literary community going forward. I do have a chapbook out on submission, a collaborative project coming up with the indefatigable force of wonder that is Lindz McLeod, and a pile of stories from 2023 that need final edits and submitting. But I’m trying to not put too much pressure on myself. Because as writers, as creatives, most of us are not machines. We need downtime. We need to be able to go out and get a big full-faced sniff of the world in order to grow as writers, as humans. We need time to laugh and riot and love and lose. And we need time to read—oh, do I need time to read! My TBR pile is more mountain than mole hill these days

• The best writing location for you?

The best location for me is a quiet space, because I’m easily distracted until I get into a flow state. Today, it’s warm enough to write in the garden where the hush of traffic is almost a white noise, occasionally broken by the bleating of nearby sheep. But, usually, I’m at my desk with the door shut and the dog at my feet, or I’m in the warm conservatory, sprawled on the sofa. The bonus of drafting stories by hand is that I can sort of chase down the quiet corners of my world when the kids, sheep, or my husband’s banjo playing rises to a certain frequency.

• Pets as muses?

Absolutely! Although sometimes quite expensive muses, as I recently found out after spending the night at the emergency vet’s office when one of my elderly cats suddenly started moving like an animatron. She’s doing much better now, thankfully. But healthy or unwell, it’s a complex emotional journey my pets bring to the table that can act as muse and help inform the emotional depth of my stories. The measure of love I can have for my pets is enormous, but then they defecate on my bed or, in my giant goldendoodle’s case, chew through several appliance cords and projectile vomit every time he gets in the car, and then that love gets a bit complicated.

And sometimes it’s not even my own pets that spark inspiration for a story, because I’m too close. While my earlier stories Seed Money and Ewe both take inspiration from my current dog, the titular dog in my story Lil Fucker takes inspiration from a neighbouring terrier with an incessant high-pitched bark that drives me to complete madness. It’s normally outside terrorising everyone who passes by, but there was an eerily quiet period that led me to wonder if the dog had died (ergo, the funeral in my story). Fortunately or unfortunately, after a peaceful couple of weeks, that inspirational terrier was back in action splitting eardrums.

• Can you give us a tiny writing prompt?

Sure! Drop a character into a public space and have something wildly unexpected happen in the first sentence, bringing the conflict front and center. What does your character observe? What’s at risk—both externally and internally—and what do they do about it? Try to use all the senses if you can and zoom between the overall scene and smaller details that evoke emotion. Don’t get bogged down by rules; let yourself play on the page. But do think about agency and action, and make something happen. If you’re feeling stuck, throw a dog into the mix (figuratively, of course!).

Jude and Sara, August, 2024.