GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2024/25
Ten questions with GBP Short Story Prize author Susannah Waters
(1) HELLO SUSANNAH AND CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GBP SHORT STORY PRIZE LONGLISTING FOR ‘AXE MURDERER’. CAN YOU INTRODUCE THE STORY TO OUR READERS, IN TWO OR THREE SENTENCES?
‘Axe Murderer’ is about a man called Jay who has bad dreams, many of which involve an axe murderer. When his sister unexpectedly pays him a visit, he is comforted by her presence but worries for her safety, especially as she befriends the axe murderer.
(2) AND CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS STORY, AND THE PROCESS OF WRITING IT?
I was driven to write this story after the sudden death of my brother in 2022. In fact the first two sentences came as a voice in my head one morning as I was waking, without me knowing where they might lead – and it was true, my brother did have bad dreams. The thought of him still having these bad dreams now that he was dead and living in some kind of purgatory house is what kept me writing.
(3) ‘AXE MURDERER’ WAS A BRILLIANT STORY TO TALK ABOUT IN OUR LONGLIST MEETING, BECAUSE THERE ARE MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS. (WHAT IS REAL, AND WHAT ISN’T? WHAT IS ACTUALLY GOING ON…) CAN YOU TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT THAT AMBIGUITY – AND HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS TO CREATE AND/OR MAINTAIN IT?
Yes, this ambiguity was a large part of what I was chasing, the parallels between sleep and death, between dreams and life. Between whether people have truly left us and the places where they might remain, between which fears are real and which are not. I had to be careful to be consistent with the concrete details – the house, the beach, the murderer – within that fogginess, and it’s taken many drafts and many discarded sentences to get that right. Getting feedback from readers was an important part of that process. And I only added the last section of the story at a very late phase.
(4) FOLLOWING ON FROM THAT LAST QUESTION – HOW MUCH CERTAINTY DID YOU WANT THE READER TO COME AWAY WITH?
Good question. I think I am happy with uncertainty, and interested in it whenever I read a story. But I also think each reader will bring their own beliefs and experiences, their own hopes and fears, to their interpretation. And I welcome that. In the end it doesn’t matter to me whose story is true – is brother really dead, or not? The heart of the matter is the love between Jay and his sister.
(5) OK! WRITING IN GENERAL. TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROUTINES – OR LACK OF THEM.
My wife will tell you I’m a stickler for routine. Not very exciting. Barring special events, I try to write every day, three to four hours, but even on the days I have very little time, I will do even half an hour to keep the story alive in my head. I work as a fiction editor and so I carry a lot of other people’s stories in my head, and because of this I tend to edit and talk with writers in the morning from my home, and then go out in the afternoon to work on my own stories. This physical separation, with a dog walk in between, signals to my imagination it’s time to surface.
(6) WRITING AND REWRITING: WHAT’S YOUR RATIO?
Rewriting for me is nearly ninety percent of what finally creates a story I can feel happy about. I often visualise it as something emerging, slowly rising, from a murky pond. And it’s only through iteration after iteration that the story begins to make itself clear to me. This is the bit I love, the playing with what I’ve got, what my imagination has thrown onto the page. The initial draft is always hard and always not it, yet. I’ve learned over the years to wait for what will come.
(7) WHAT’S THE WORST PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED – AND THE BEST?
I can’t really think of any bad writing advice I’ve received, or maybe I’ve just blocked it out! Even feedback you don’t necessarily agree with often has some grain of truth in it, which it’s useful to explore. Ignore the reader at your peril, I guess is what I mean. As to the best advice – I think the writer George Saunders’ constant return to delight, the idea of delighting oneself in one’s writing, and his example of coming down from the ‘Hemingway mountain’ – the act of trying to write like any of the writers you most admire – and embracing your own little writer dungheap, is golden. I’ve learned so much from copying the brushstrokes of the writers I most love, but in the end I had to let all of that compost, for better or worse, into the writing that is mine.
(8) OTHER WRITERS. TELL US ABOUT SOME YOU ESPECIALLY ADMIRE. ALSO WHAT YOU’RE READING AT THE MOMENT.
So, the aforementioned George Saunders, for his writing but also for his generosity and kindness when sharing his craft. So many writers have inspired me: Tolstoy, Raymond Carver, Olga Tokarczuk, Donna Tartt, Percival Everett, David Mitchell, Elizabeth Strout, Haruki Murakami,Italo Calvino, Michael Faber, Sarah Waters… I’ve left so many out. I’m like a magpie picking up shiny things from all these nests. At the moment I am reading All Fours by Miranda July, and loving its paciness. Last thing I read was Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett, and next on the pile is a book called New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani that my wife just gave me for my birthday.
(9) AND HERE’S A SPOT TO NAMECHECK ANY OTHER FAVOURITE THINGS: ARTISTS, ARTS, FILMS, CINEMAS, TV, MUSIC… WHATEVER YOU LIKE.
I love a good TV series. At the moment, particularly, Severance, and The Curse. Can’t wait for Series 3 of The White Lotus. The Charlotte Wells film, Aftersun, destroyed me, and came the closest to recreating the grief I experienced after losing my brother. Such a beautiful piece of work.
(10) “THE HORROR OF THE BLANK PAGE.” DO YOU FEEL THAT HORROR? AND HOW WOULD YOU ADVISE OTHER WRITERS TO GET BEYOND IT?
No, I don’t really get that, thank goodness. I can definitely feel despondent about my work, and despair that my writing will never be what I want it to be. I’ve tried to stop a few times, but it never lasts more than a few days. My best advice would be just to keep turning up. Make it a habit, like brushing your teeth, even for short amounts of time. And eventually your imagination will get the message.
SUSANNAH WATERS has worked as an opera singer, an opera and theatre director, a founder and Artistic Director of a multi-arts production company, and a fiction editor. She was born in the UK, moved to America with her family as a child, and returned to the UK in her early twenties. She has published two novels. ‘Axe Murderer’ was written after the death of her brother who was killed in a cycling accident.