Author Profiles

In my very first post on this blog, almost exactly four years ago, I wrote of attending a conference for Creative Writing MSc graduates, and learning the mantra: I am a writer. (Interestingly, an article entitled When Can You Call Yourself A Writer? has been popping up on twitter recently, and it's worth reading over at The Write Life here.)

Even though I now (ghost)write for a living, it sometimes still feels a bit odd to label myself a writer. I'm not sure whether it's because many people's idea of a writer is a JK Rowling-type figure - ie hugely prolific and successful, or whether being a writer is something I've wanted for so long that I can't quite bring myself to say it aloud, lest I jinx it somehow.

This week, however, a little validation (rare in this profession, and always welcome) came my way, as I managed to set up an Author Profile on Amazon, as well as update my existing one on Goodreads:

Author Profile on Amazon

Author Profile on Goodreads

Despite being published in Modern Grimmoire and Stories for Homes, it didn't really occur to me I would be entitled to a page of my very own on these sites until I realised others from the anthologies were featured on Amazon and Goodreads in this way. This timidity on my part took me back to the conference in 2009 that encouraged us declare: I am a writer. I think, in future, I shall be repeating that mantra to myself a little more often, in order that my next milestone as an author doesn't come as such a surprise.

2012: The Writing Year in Numbers

Completing NaNoWriMo and pushing through the last few weeks of work before Christmas seem to have robbed me of all energy, therefore I present my review of the writing year mostly in numerical form:

2 novels undertaken, one for work, one for... fun(?)

3 competition successes: Cargo Publishing/Scottish Book Trust's twitter competition, Indigo Ink's Grimmoire Fairy Tales anthology, 5 Minute Fiction's Christmas competition

9 short stories completed: Something New of You, It'll All be Gone Tomorrow, The Gorgon and the Goddess, Ring-a-Roses, The Weeping Glen, Unnamed, Unsettled, The Visitor, The Queen and the Stag

12 blog posts (far better than last year's effort of 1)

63 short stories ghostwritten

179 tweets, mostly about writing

25, 432 words written for NaNoWriMo

77, 159 current length of the complete (in first draft) novel

And now for some New Year writing goals/projects in bullet point form:

• Rewrite novel

• Complete more stories for fairy tale anthology

• Enter more competitions

• Keep up the Pen Poppers (writers' group)

• Write more posts for Writers' Block (meta)

Think that's my lot for now. 2012, you've been awesome. 2013, I'll deal with you later.

Happy New Year!

Novel November

It's all Joss Whedon's fault.

I was just minding my own business on twitter last week, when up popped ‘Ten Writing Tips from Joss Whedon.' Now normally, I take these sorts of lists with a large pinch of salt - especially since I recently read one from a very respected publication that advised ‘always write short stories in the first person.’ Really? Always? However, Joss is different: Joss is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (if you’re eye-rolling, you know nothing and must order your boxset immediately), and Buffy taught me a hell of a lot about telling stories – not to mention fighting the forces of darkness – during my teenage years. So Joss, I would listen to.*

Eagerly, I clicked on the link. This was the first thing I read:

1. FINISH IT

Actually finishing it is what I’m gonna put in as step one. You may laugh at this, but it’s true. I have so many friends who have written two-thirds of a screenplay, and then re-written it for about three years. Finishing a screenplay is first of all truly difficult, and secondly really liberating. Even if it’s not perfect, even if you know you’re gonna have to go back into it, type to the end. You have to have a little closure.

I got no further through the list, as by this point I was experiencing a horrible gnawing sensation in my stomach: guilt. For although Joss was primarily advising screenwriters, I could not help but think of my own novel, languishing in a forgotten folder somewhere on my computer, so near yet frustratingly so far from being a complete manuscript. And the more I thought about it, that hateful work that I had banished from my mind for six months or more, the more I... Well, I kind of... missed it.

Oh, I admit it. I wanted it back. For a second, my subconscious went soft and ached to write it, to finish it - and that second was enough for the more businesslike side of my brain to seize upon its counterpart's weakness and go, "haha! Then write it and finish it, you wastrel!"

A timeline of 'the novel' (I hate calling it that, but all my working titles are, frankly, crap):

• Sometime in 2006: thinking idly about the lack of modern stories featuring fathers and daughters (as opposed to fairy tales, where they're all over the place), I come up with a vague idea about a teenage girl's madcap weekend in London with her estranged, unstable father. 
• April 2008: during my final term of the MSc, I decide it is an excellent idea to pen this emotionally complex plot - now set in my new home city of Edinburgh - as a novella in three months. Incidentally, it isn't a good idea and there are many tears. 
• November 2009: due to the MSc trauma, I don't look at the story again for over a year. Then for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I decided to rewrite the whole thing as a full-blown novel. In a month. Somewhat surprisingly, I achieve this - although because a 'Nano' novel is only 50,000 words, the manuscript is unfinished. 
• September 2010 - June 2011: I workshop a good chunk of the incomplete draft with my Edinburgh writers' group, WOW, until I move to Geneva.

But Joss is right, isn't he? Of course he is. I need closure. How can I edit the early part of the story if the end isn't even written? I need to finish it - and not just for the sake of it, but because over the years it's developed into a story I truly want - and think it's important - to tell:

Fifteen year-old Ruby Chase is devoted to her estranged father, the carefree and reckless Leo. But over the course of one weekend in Edinburgh, they are torn apart by his inability to control his bipolar disorder, and her inability to understand it.

Five years later, they are reunited at Ruby's grandmother’s funeral. The now medicated Leo is desperate to make amends for what happened in Edinburgh, but Ruby struggles to forgive him, caught now between the two Leos: the stable stranger who is offering her a father once more, and the adored, troubled dad she loved and lost.

Looking back at that timeline, it seems I've progressed the most with the novel under pressure: the MSc, Nano and WOW (acronyms seem to help). I was going to do Nano again with a new novel this November, but really what's the point when I have one already 70% finished? So instead, I've decided to come up with my own Nano-inspired challenge whereby I finish my novel in first/second draft. Then at least I'll have a manuscript. At least I'll be able to print it out, flick through it whilst laughing wildly, and scribble this is awful - cut, cut, CUT! all over it in green pen

So yes, exactly one month from today, it's not so much National Novel Writing Month as National Novel Finishing Month (NaNoFiMo? Sounds like some sort of Plasticine challenge). It's going to be difficult and it's going to be liberating. There will almost certainly be more tears.

And it's all Joss Whedon's fault.

Joss is Boss.

*If you need further proof of Joss' genius, watch the above and don't even try not to fist-pump.

Unbound

Stories come in all shapes and sizes. Ernest Hemingway famously penned a tale comprised of just six words:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

What has always struck (and moved) me about Hemingway’s six-worder is that it is potent precisely because of what is not said and what the reader is left to infer – in short, the old ‘show don’t tell’ chestnut. Going by this principle, I decided to pen my own six-word effort for a twitter competition. This was the result:

Zookeeper missing. Distraught lion loses appetite.

Hemingway it ain’t, but unbeknownst to me at the time, the above six words were to draw me into a far bigger story in which I – or more specifically, my name – was to play a rather large role. 

The twitter competition in question was organised by Scottish Book Trust (SBT) as part of  their ‘It Will Be All Write On The Night’ project. Described as ‘a storytelling experience with a difference,’ SBT had challenged three of their New Writers Award winners to pen a story in weekly instalments for the final night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF). In addition to this, each chapter was to be influenced by prompts from twitter and Facebook, such as book spine poetry or a favourite piece of artwork.

I admit to only vaguely following what was going on when I entered the competition (and if I haven’t explained it very well, there’s more info on it all here) but I was nevertheless thrilled when Cargo Publishing declared my story the winner, and thus the next prompt of the project. Well marvellous, I thought, eagerly anticipating how that week’s author, Kirstin Innes, would be slotting lions into the tale. Only, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. For when the next chapter appeared on SBT’s website, I discovered it wasn’t just my six words that were woven into the story, but my name too.  

I can’t really go into it too much without spoiling the story (which I really recommend reading, starting from the bottom of this page) suffice to say that what was emerging by the time we got to Kirstin’s Part Five was the tale of a rebel movement’s struggle against an oppressive regime – a rebel movement now named ‘the Amanda Block.’ 

He was as surprised as I was.

I have to confess: I panicked. Seeing my name like that was so strange, so unexpected, I didn’t know what to think. Fortunately, after a soothing conversation with SBT’s Writer Development Manager, Caitrin Armstrong, and a thorough reread of the work so far, I began to gain a bit of perspective. What was going on, I realised, was something rather special: a big, bold story was being created, not just by one author, but three; not just from one idea, but from multiple prompts and multiple medias. It was, in fact, exactly the kind of experimental and collaborative approach to storytelling that I’m keen on. And when I looked at it like that, I was keen to be a part of it too. 

“We have a few ideas for the night itself,” Caitrin explained to me. “We wanted to have posters with ‘the Amanda Block’ on them and – I’m not sure you’ll go for this – but we were thinking of putting it on badges too.”

Posters? Badges? I should point out at this juncture that Caitrin assured me my name would not be used against my will and it was my decision as to whether it be included at all. Going away to think about it, however, I found myself reflecting that this was the last night of the Edinburgh International Book Festival we were talking about, where an exciting narrative featuring my name was nearing completion. How could I not agree? I gave her the go-ahead, badges and all.

So to the night itself, which miraculously coincided with my summer visit to Edinburgh. ‘It Will Be All Write On The Night’ was to be EIBF’s last ‘Unbound’ event (if EIBF is, by day, a bespectacled, buttoned-up nerd, then Unbound is the moment it ruffles up its hair, throws its specs aside and orders a vodka or three to wash down all that literature). I had been told that, aside from getting up on stage and reading all of six words, I could sit back and enjoy the show. But that didn’t stop me from being a little apprehensive, especially as the section of the Spiegeltent in which I was sitting was dubbed 'the representatives of ‘the Amanda Block’'.

I needn’t have worried. Because despite the posters and the badges bearing my name - yep, there really were posters and badges - the evening was, of course, not about me. It was about the writers and it was about the story, which once more I really urge you to investigate (I have come to the conclusion it’s Margaret Atwood meets Cloud Atlas with a bit of The Hunger Games thrown in - and if that hasn’t made you want to read it, I don’t know what will). And it was about expanding that story too for, as a final challenge, Kirstin and her fellow New Writers, George Anderson and R. A. Martens, were asked to complete it that very night using prompt words from the audience (deliberately difficult words, it emerged: scunnered? Unicorn?) But they rose to the occasion magnificently and their fitting final chapter can be read here.

So, in the end, it was more than all right on the night. After a few gin and tonics, it seemed perfectly normal to me that tables and people were festooned with ‘the Amanda Block’ badges. Besides, by that point I was far more interested in the brilliant – if rather madcap – tale that somehow belonged, at least in part, to everyone there that night. The authors had triumphed, the challenge had paid off, and it was all so much fun – just as storytelling should be. 

Plus it’s not every day a rebel movement is named after you…

I got to keep one.