SmokeLong Quarterly

In 2024 SmokeLong hosted our second SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. Our workshop participants reported almost 300 publications to us before November 1, 2024. In 2025, we’ll be featuring one writer each week from The SmokeLong Workshop Prize long list. It’s an excellent series of interviews, each grappling with questions about workshopping, giving and receiving feedback, and the publication process. If you are a previous or current SmokeLong workshop participant and you have ultimately published something you began in a SmokeLong workshop, remember to enter The SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. This free-to-enter competition is on our Submittable page.

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An Interview with Linda M. Bayley — “Swiftly, Swiftly Over Ice” published in National Flash Fiction Day Anthology UK and “Crunchy” published by Underbelly Press

What do you remember about the workshop where you wrote these stories? What were the prompts or writing tasks that led to them?

“Swiftly, Swiftly Over Ice”

This story was written as a bonus task in the last week of January 2024. I spun some picker wheels and got the prompts of a frozen lake, sisters, and an omniscient narrator. I immediately had the image of a girl pulling a younger sister on skates behind her, and the long red scarf strung between them. And not satisfied with having just sisters in my story, I also put a brother on the shore, watching them. My first draft was so breathless that I literally had two versions going at the same time: one on my iPad, where I was typing into Google Docs, and one on paper, where I was madly scribbling alternatives to what I’d just typed. This was at the beginning of my SmokeLong Fitness experience, and “Swiftly” was so different from anything I’d ever written before that I couldn’t believe I’d written it. At the same time it felt very right, like this was the kind of writing I was meant to do.

“Crunchy”

I had already written a version of this story before SmokeLong Fitness, but I revised it twice in the workshop. I was playing with two different stories my parents had told me: one about how my father couldn’t understand why my mother wouldn’t agree to buy two kinds of peanut butter, and one about how when she was married to my father, my mother had no idea what colour her own eyes were. Some of my story notes are wedged in between the reading Sherrie Flick did for SmokeLong in January 2024 and Christopher Allen’s Elements of Flash workshop, so I believe the final story was also heavily influenced by those two events.

Peer-review feedback is always full of surprises. In general, what kind of feedback do you find helpful? What kind of feedback do you find less helpful?

The most helpful feedback is the kind that makes me ask new questions about my own work. Do we need this minor character? Does it make sense what this other character is doing? I like knowing what a story makes the reader feel, or not feel. I like knowing when what’s clear in my own head is not coming across at all. Less helpful is the feedback that tells me what to do. I far prefer “what if you did this?” to “do this.” The best kind of feedback comes from readers who know what I want from my own work, and help guide me towards that goal. But this comes with time and trust, and a lot of hard work.

To how many places did you send these stories? Can you tell us a little about their journeys to publication?

“Swiftly, Swiftly Over Ice”

I sent this story out just once, to the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, then spent a month biting my nails and hoping. But also I’d read some of the NFFD anthologies by then, and the quality of those stories was so high I didn’t really think I had a chance. Then I got an email that said “Congratulations!” I was high for days afterwards. Big thank you to Karen Jones and Sarah Hills.

“Crunchy”

Underbelly Press was the second place I sent this story to, after a great deal of revision and workshopping. I submitted to Underbelly Press as soon as they opened their first submission window, because I’d come across them on Twitter/X and loved the energy they were putting out into the world. “Crunchy” could not have found a better home!

What is your advice to someone considering taking part in a peer-review workshop?

To someone considering taking part in SmokeLong Fitness, I would say (and have said), “Don’t hesitate.” But apart from SmokeLong Fitness, I would say, “Be choosy.” By which I mean, be choosy about who you share your work with. Be choosy about what feedback you accept. If you can, find people to read your work who understand what your heart wants your writing to become, and who will ask you the right kinds of questions to help you get there. I’ve been extremely lucky to find these sorts of people in SmokeLong, and in other spaces. But I also have to say, “Be generous.” When you’re giving feedback, never start a sentence with “Don’t,” unless the next two words are “be afraid.” Stories are fragile at birth, and so are writers when birthing them. To make the workshop work, you have to give what you want to get. For me, that means asking questions, reading with curiosity, and looking at the intent of the piece, not just the format. It’s easy to correct a person’s typos or grammar and think you’ve given them feedback, but that’s not why they’ve come to the workshop. If you’re considering taking part in a peer-review workshop, be prepared to go into it with your heart fully open.

Purchase the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology to read “Swiftly, Swiftly Over Ice” by Linda M. Bayley.
Read “Crunchy” by Linda M. Bayley in Underbelly Press.

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Linda M. Bayley is a writer living on the Canadian Shield. Her work has recently appeared in voidspace zine, Five Minutes, BULL, Short Circuit, FlashFlood Journal, Underbelly Press, Stanchion, Does It Have Pockets?, Roi Fainéant, and Tiny Sparks Everywhere, the National Flash Fiction Day 2024 Anthology. Find her on Twitter and Bluesky @lmbayley.