Tice Cin, LISP Jury

Interview with Tice Cin, LISP Jury

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from Tottenham, North London. An awardee of the Literary Fiction category for London Writers Awards, she has just completed her first novel. Her work has been published by Skin Deep Magazine and commissioned by venues including Battersea Arts Centre and St Paul's Cathedral. An alumnus of the poetry community Barbican Young Poets, she now creates digital art as part of Design Yourself - a collective based at Barbican Centre - exploring what it means to be human.

(Photo by Ata Sürer)

What impresses you the most in a story?

Voice. And an understanding of how to toy with voice. I love to feel that what I'm reading gives the effect of putting your head underwater, where everything feels heightened. A good voice can do that well. 

How do you describe the art of compression? Also, can you give us some tips on how to master it?

Your words are powerful. I always try to say the most in the least amount of words possible. My advice is to go back to your text and whittle it down so that it is as clean as possible, and then only add your descriptive words back in if they're absolutely adding to the narrative/ linguistic experiment. 

How do awards affect writers? As an awardee, how did it made you feel to receive it?

I think that we find validation from different places. The very act of putting yourself forward to receive an award is a sign that you are placing faith in yourself and your abilities, you're backing yourself. It's helpful for me to have awards as goalposts to write towards, and I find deadlines motivating. Receiving awards brings so much gratitude of course, but it also helped me to leverage more opportunities for myself. 

Finally, what advice would you like to give for the ones wanting to enter our Short Story and Flash Fiction competition? 

Read lots of short stories. Read outside of the genre you are writing in to pick up skills and techniques that you can bring back to your own project. I also suggest building your scenes with detail, I like reading work by someone with a sharp eye for small things.