Maia Cornish, following her Celtic roots, has travelled to every continent apart from Antarctica (yet). Her short stories and poems have been inspired by the people she’s met along the way. Maia is a lover of all things weird and wonderful, and puns. You can follow her work at https://maiacornish.wordpress.com
How long have you been writing and what got you started?
I started writing almost 60 years ago, aged 11. My first piece was a fantasy about a door beneath an apple tree and I realised instantly that I loved writing. My next piece (aged 12) was a thinly veiled autobiographical piece which I didn’t dare show anyone. Sadly, I continued to write ‘in secret’ for the next 50 years and that was a bad mistake. When asked by family and friends what I was writing my standard response was “my journal”.
Eventually, in my late-50s I enrolled on an Open University Creative Writing course and discovered flash fiction and the joy of sharing. I finally learned how to turn my personal experiences into themes and story arcs, and how to create characters that worked for my purposes. It was so liberating.
Are you an outliner or discovery writer? Or somewhere in between?
A combination, it seems. I do my best thinking when I have a pen in my hand, or sitting at a speedy keyboard, and after that I’ll take several different approaches. Sometimes I have a story I want to tell, and I’ll write slowly, delete a lot, have an outline in my mind, and work it out on paper. Other times I’ll have a first line, a character, or a scenario, and I’ll just write whatever comes into my mind, grabbing at ideas as they form, and later I’ll edit to make it flow smoothly. I try not to be too mindful while I’m writing because then the self-doubt creeps in (which makes it hard for me to write longer pieces unless I have a clear set of ‘scenes’ already planned, and then I just move through each of them until I’m done). My writing is a real reflection of my personality, and I’m a bit of a butterfly. If it isn’t working, I move on, leave it on the back burner and try something new until I know how to fix it.
Do you ever get criticism from family or friends who don’t understand your passion?
I’m still a little secretive about my writing, although I’ve started to show some of my work to friends. In many ways I’m quite an extrovert but I don’t function properly unless I get time to write each day and I prefer to spend “as long as it takes” in solitude. My writing is such an integral part of my lifestyle, so friends and family either think I’m becoming a recluse, or just find me weird. Or else they ignore it completely and think it’s optional. Thank goodness for other writers, artists, and musicians, who have no problem accepting my introvert/extrovert personality.
Do you participate in any online or in-person critique or writing groups?
Yes, and it was through the support of other writers that I started to share my work, especially over the last 5 years. Without them I would still be writing in secret, too nervous and lacking in confidence to share it. In fact, “The Fairy Must Die” was written within an online writing group. It was the result of a one-hour writing challenge, where raw, unpolished pieces of flash fiction were shared in the group.
It’s a tremendous validation as a writer to be part of such supportive and trustworthy groups as this, both online and in-person.
How do you deal with rejections?
I’m learning. The first rejections hurt and took time to recover from. But the more often I submit and receive rejections the better I deal with it. My best advice would be to keep sending work out. If a piece comes back, try to find another market as soon as possible. If I get personal feedback, I’ll review my work and check if I want to make any edits or whether I’ll store the advice away for future reference. And I’ve learned a lot from following Aeryn Rudel’s ‘Rejectomancy’ (link https://rejectomancy.com) – a great resource for gaining resilience in the world of fiction writing.
What is the best piece of advice you have for new writers?
Be prepared to try something new. Experiment with new ways of writing, accept crazy challenges and random ideas. Spend time with other writers to gather support, to step outside of your comfort zone and to take risks. And if you have a story to tell, get it written in whatever way you can. Even fast and dirty will give you words to work with, and then you can take all the time you need to edit and refine it before you finally let it go.
What are your writing goals for the next five years?
I have an unfulfilled ambition to write a novel (I have several abandoned attempts staring at me from that back burner I already mentioned), and so I’ve been intrigued by the recent trend in UK to write Novella in Flash. I’d like to explore this more, experiment with characters and story arcs that are inter-related but where each is a complete piece, and where the whole collection contains a compelling plot.
Apart from that, I’d like to collect my published pieces into a tidy anthology, self-publish it, and leave it on my bookshelf as a small legacy to my family when I’m gone. I’m very happy that I will be able to add ‘The Fairy Must Die’ to its pages.
What tips do you have for finding time to write?
Don’t wait until you retire!
