Diana Powell tells us all about her writing

 

 

I’m Diana Powell, and I write short stories and novels. I love the short story genre – the variety found in its form, style and subject… how you can be writing about a man dancing with a flamingo, one minute; or a woman who sees Jesus in a tree, the next. Or is that just me?!

 

In the beginning, I think my desire to write came from my love of books, leading me to want to have one with my own words inside, with my name on the cover. In addition to this, I have always had a strong creative need, and it is writing that fulfils this. But I am also very interested in the workings of the mind and use my stories as a way of exploring some rather strange examples of what it is to be human.

 

For many years, I never called myself a writer. I would be a ‘housewife’, a ‘homemaker’, a part-time this and that, and would never tell people that I spent much of my time writing, or that I had won a short story competition or two. Then, soon after we moved to Pembrokeshire, I signed up on a Lifelong Learning ‘Write a Novel’ course, and the tutor, Helen Carey, said ‘But you ARE a writer.’ Her words, together with the fact that I won another competition soon afterwards gave me the self-belief to use that word.

 

I tend to write in the morning, as I’m a ‘morning person’. This is when I’m at my most creative, so I’ll try to leave editing, research, admin etc until later in the day. I write in our spare room – a well-lit room, which also houses a lot of books, including my own. Fortunately, from a writing point of view, at least, we don’t have many visitors!

I love research, I love choosing stories that require a lot of background investigation – to write about what I DON’T know! The flamingo story was about an eighteenth-century French ornithologist who built a Cabinet of Curiosities, so I needed to study the period and these amazing objects.  Sometimes, I lose myself in the research – there will be too many rabbit-holes to go down. So then, a moment might come, when I say ‘no more!’. ‘Just write the story!’.

I enjoy editing, and will work on several versions, before deciding the piece is right. I do edit as I go along, but also have entire re-writes, and usually end with reading my work aloud, to check the ‘sound’ of it. Even though I am adamant that I write for the page, I do like a story to flow well, and I am always very pleased when my work is described as ‘poetical’.

 

It seems to me that the stories I love often turn out to be the ones that do well in competitions, becoming the ones I’m most proud of. One of my stories won the 2022 Bristol Prize – chosen by Irenosen Okojie, out of over two thousand international entries. Another won the 2019 Chipping Norton Lit Prize and was then runner-up in the Society of Authors ALCS Tom-Gallon Award. It is an amazing feeling when top writers praise your work.

 I was also delighted to be commissioned to write about Pembrokeshire’s holy wells, for the Ancient Connections project, forging links between our area and Wexford.  I really enjoyed that, as it led me to explore parts of the county I hadn’t visited before.

 

For different reasons, I am also very proud of my longer works: ‘Esther Bligh’ because it was the first; ‘things found on the mountain’, because it was accepted for publication by one of Wales’s top presses; ‘The Sisters of Cynvael’, because it won the Cinnamon Press Literature Award, with publication by the press as its prize.

But something that always makes me proud and happy is when someone, a friend or a stranger,, tells me how much they loved my story or book. It’s always a very special moment.

 

I’ve just begun another story and another novel. My YA novel is due to be published in a month or so. I can’t imagine ever not writing. It’s part of me, of who I am. And although it can be hard – when one rejection follows another, or you can’t find the words you are sure are somewhere inside your head – I’ll keep on at it, because I love it!