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The Story Of A Writer Meet other writers online and talk about your successes and hopes, pleasure and desires ...I’ve always enjoyed writing letters and even essays at university but hadn’t really thought about ‘proper’ writing till about 1996. I live on a farm with my family and we read The Scottish Farmer from cover to cover every week. One week it announced a ‘soapbox’ slot – 500 words to rant about whatever annoyed you. ‘I could do that’ I thought. And did. I had about 3 rants published, although unfortunately they did not pay contributors. I thought, ‘This writing lark is easy. I wonder if I could get published anywhere else and get paid for it?’ I happened to talk to a friend about writing and she mentioned Ayr Writers’ Club. So, after Christmas one year, we talked each other into joining. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the other members were totally normal human beings. That spring I was excited to hear that the editor of My Weekly was coming to speak to the Club. I wanted to enter the competition but since I was such a slow writer I thought I’d better work out what I was going to write in advance. (At that time the speaker would announce the competition on the night they spoke.) I had a look at a few copies of the magazine and decided it was all about knitting patterns. I started to write a story about a girl knitting a shawl for her first baby. When the editor came along to the club he was very specific about the sort of story he wanted. It had to be about a house and a dog. My story was totally unsuitable for the competition but I decided to send it in to the magazine anyway. Much to my amazement, they accepted it. (Incidentally, the competition story was never published.) While the editor was there, he wondered out loud about starting a children’s story section in My Weekly. My two sons were young at that time and proved to be a perfect source for ideas. A few weeks later the club sent off an A4 envelope stuffed with stories. I sent off three, two of which were accepted. As I said, this writing lark was easy. Then my beginner’s luck abandoned me. The next batch of women’s stories I sent off weren’t accepted. I tried other magazines, without success. I found it quite depressing but other Club members kept encouraging me to keep on writing. I remember a conversation with Rowena Love at this time. She said, ‘Go to all the workshops, even if you’ve never thought of writing non-fiction or poetry or drama. You will get something out of every workshop.’ And she was right. Unfortunately, the one genre I couldn’t write in was the workshop run by Rowena – poetry. Every time I thought of poetry I seemed to get a mental block. I tried writing for another section in My Weekly – Lighter Looks. These were light-hearted humorous articles. Again I had beginner’s luck with my first article and I went on to have some more published before the magazine stopped that section. I sent more children’s stories off to My Weekly and had a number published before that section folded. (Are you detecting a common theme here?) I was still determined to try and have more women’s short stories published. I decided to go back to the one story that had been published – ‘The Shawl’- and send it off to magazines in other countries. I was thrilled to bits when it was accepted for publication in South Africa then in Australia. When Ann Burnett was children’s workshop leader she persuaded me to send off a story to Bernagh Brims at BBC Radio Ulster. It was accepted for the children’s education programme, One Potato, Two Potato. I went on to write a number of scripts for this programme and also stories for Hurley Burley, a programme aimed at nursery school-age children. Hurley Burley is now produced as a television programme and I’ve been lucky enough to have had stories animated in both the first and second series. I happened to read on the intranet at work that East Ayrshire Council were going to be involved in creating a walk from the source of the river Ayr to the sea. Since I live fairly close to the river Ayr I decided I would do some research on the area. I ended up writing an article on the history of the various towns, buildings and areas of interest by the river. This was published in an Information Pack giving details of the River Ayr Way in the spring of 2006. In 2007, I sold another article on the river Ayr to a new magazine, Xpose. By now I’ve had something published or broadcast in almost every genre – fiction, children’s, non-fiction and scripts for the BBC – every genre that is, except poetry. However, never say never. Last year, after a poetry workshop, something must have eventually clicked in my brain and I started working on a poem. I sent it off to the McCash Poetry competition and a few months later found out it had been shortlisted. Rowena read it out for me at the presentation of prizes. So I guess I now have had work published or performed in all of the main writing genres. I was as chuffed with the success of this poem as when I had my first article published in The Scottish Farmer all those years ago.. |
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