• This Writing Journey

    The Novel Dream

    I wanted to write a novel. I wanted to create my own fantasy epic. But I was only 15 and had no idea what I was doing, so all my planning consisted of was buying an A5 exercise book. (I was at my parents’ last week and scrounging around in the garage looking for something else entirely, and actually found the exercise book – right.) I’d stay up nights, pumping myself full of cups of tea and cigarettes, scribbling away while one of the midnight music shows of the time, like Rage, played in the background. The exercise book (and its successor) even accompanied me when my parents took me…

  • Sleeping Wide Awake

    Seventeen

    Here’s my writing journey – and it applies to all forms I’ve written in: short stories, screenplays, and novels. But I’ll use novels as the model. I’ll write a novel, revise, submit. Rejection. I’ll submit again. Rejection. And again. Rejection. I’ll revise again and again and again. Submit. Rejection. Submit elsewhere. Rejection. Submit all around. I might get a nibble here, a request for the whole manuscript, or a glowing personalized rejection, but a rejection all the same. Rejection. Then, after getting over the initial frustration and wanting to quit writing, I’ll start a new book, and vow that this one will be different. This book will be THE ONE.…