A writer's life for me

The last time that I mentioned my PhD in a blog post was back at the very end of October, where I promised regular updates and details on the changing nature of my project. The fact that we are now edging towards the end of December, and I’m only just delivering an update to you, is probably all you need to realise that my previous vow hasn’t exactly held strong. Thankfully, the optimism and excitement that I voiced in my last blog post about this is as strong now as it was then, in fact, I’d go as far to say that it’s growing. From the end of October to the end of November, there was a heck of a lot of reading. I’m gobbling down about two novels a week, and one non-fiction book a week, which I’m fairly happy with. I’ve made a decent dent in the Tony Hill series from Val McDermid, I’ve recently polished off Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby, and now I’m reading Tom Robbins’ Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m resear...

On Thursday afternoon, travelling home from a meeting at university, I’m mid-phone call with my friend when he announces that P.D James has died. It seems to have been a year of deaths for the celebrity and writing community, but something about James’s passing really hit me. Which is probably why it’s taken me two days to write down my thoughts about it. In the final year of my undergraduate degree, I opted to write my dissertation on detective fiction. To my utter dismay, I was paired with a lecturer who, whilst being a complete expert in her chosen field, had no interest or knowledge in the area in which I was exploring for my project. Four weeks into my dissertation meetings, I presented to her the three authors (and their respective works) that I would be investigating, analysing, and using as a blueprint for my own writing. P.D James was one of them. Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler were the other two, and so, as a young female writer interested in female writers, James had ...

I’m doing a PhD. It still feels weird to say that when people ask what I’m doing with myself these days. Although, the alternative answer of ‘I spend my days reading about murder’ would probably impress people a whole lot less than dropping the PhD-bomb seems to. That is, until I tell them that my PhD is in Creative Writing, then a whole other can of worms gets opened about why I’m doing a PhD course in such a widely put-down subject. But it’s probably best that I don’t get on my soap box about that just yet… I thought the idea of a PhD was that you went in with an outstandingly specific idea and carved a place for yourself in your industry, based around this innovative idea of yours. So when it came to writing my proposal, that’s what I tried to do. In isolating a specific area of both history and modern literature that I thought was under-explored, I gained my place on the course. I had very strict ideas about how I would research and develop my novel - because that’s what m...

The unthinkable has happened. A writer friend, who I feel particularly close to, has told me that he doesn’t think he wants to write any more. It opened up a whole can of conflict in me when he told me, the first reason being - is that a choice that you can make? I was under the impression that writing was a calling or a vocation, or something else that sounds like a massive cliché, rather than something that you can stop and start at will. My second issue arose when he explained why… I’m paraphrasing, but he said something along the lines of: I’m tired of only writing when I feel shit about something. Writing used to be something that I really enjoyed but it seems to have turned into something that I do when I feel like a complete mess and I need an outlet. That’s the only stuff I ever write down these days and I don’t know that that’s a good approach to have, so I feel like I should get out of it. It brought up a lot of further questions, with the old favourite ‘why do you writ...

'It happens' hit me like a one-two punch. I replied with a stare. First at you. Then at her dress,                     slung over our feature chair. 'It happens' but the judge didn't agree with me.

In my notebook I have a sort of sarcastic list about what things are essential for a writer. So, before you launch into reading this, I think you should take note that I’m kind of only half-serious. Unless, of course, you read something that’s totally inspiring, eye-opening, and perspective-changing for you - in which case, I’m deadly serious, and I take full responsibility for whatever epiphany you’ve just had. Fair deal? Now, on the list of ‘writing essentials’, I have written ‘the myth of inspiration’.  The Myth of Inspiration.  I suspect the picture at the top of this blog post is what spawned this particular essential. Before I started my Masters degree in Creative Writing, I was actually one of those people who waited for inspiration to strike, and sometimes I still am one of those people. Unfortunately, and this is something I learned rather quickly when I started my Masters, those people aren’t very good at meeting deadlines; and, when you’re writing for someon...

After a recent discussion with a friend, I started wondering exactly what people do, through both choice and necessity, for the sake of their chosen art form. My friend believes that you should suffer for your art, which to me seems either extreme or perhaps somewhat hyperbolic; nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if it’s at the very least a little bit true. I don’t mean direct suffering in a self-torture, deliberately making things difficult for yourself sort of sense, because that really would be extreme, but maybe there are things in life that people frequently and willing sacrifice in order to better themselves and their work - now, is that suffering for your art, or is that something else?  It’s a bit of a social stereotype that writers are these off-the-wall characters who can be really turbulent in terms of how available they are, in terms of both emotion and time. It seems writers have a fairly unimpressive and off-putting list of credentials, some of which are true, I ...

I will hold my hands up and proudly admit that up until last Thursday, I was a Worcestershire Lit Fest & Fringe virgin. I toyed with the idea of going last year but never actually made it; so this year, whilst trying to find my feet on the performance poetry scene, I decided it was time to give the festival a go, and I’m so glad that I did.  Thursday night (June 26th) saw the SpeakEasy Festival Special - SpeakEasy being a popular open mic event in Worcester already - and not only did I perform here, but I also saw some amazing artists. Complete with two amazing headliner acts, Scott Tyrrell and Emma Purhouse, poets from around Worcester, and I’m assuming from other corners of the West Midlands, banded together for what turned into a brilliant couple of hours of spoken word. A first-timer to the event, I was absolutely over-whelmed by the massive amount of support from both other performers and from audience-members - it truly was a brilliant atmosphere and I was so hap...

Yesterday I asked the potentially awkward question of whether writers are difficult to be romantically involved with. When I wrote that piece and then blogged it, I had no idea that there would be so many opinions on it; and I had no idea that discussing those opinions with people would lead to yet another question, that I felt the need to blog about today.  If writers aren’t compatible with people who don’t write, do they stand a good chance of being compatible with other writers? And, if that’s the case, what happens to the creativity in that situation? Does it suffer, like it can when you’re involved with a non-creative person, or does it blossom? In other words, does creativity breed creativity? Oh, sorry, did I say one question? I actually meant about one hundred.  I’ve been on both sides of it, and I’m honestly no closer to answering any of the above questions, so please, if people have opinions about this post too then I strongly encourage you to share them with m...

It might be a bit of an awkward question to ask, but is a writer possibly one of the worst romantic partners that a person can find themselves lumbered with? I’m drawing again on something that a lecturer recently said to me; she admitted that she actually felt a remarkable amount of sympathy for partners of writers, because they really do have an awful lot to put up with. Admittedly, the thought had crossed my mind before. I’ve had more than one unsettling argument with a past partner who has found an argument recreated in a poem, and then blogged for the rest of the internet to read - shame on me, I know - but is it really, really difficult to be in a relationship with an artistic type, or do people just think it is? During a recent Jack Vettriano kick, I was reading one of the many, many biographies about the painter where he admitted to finishing a relationship once because the girl that he was with made him too happy. He found himself sitting around, staring at the sun and lovin...

Generally speaking mental health is a bit of a taboo subject, although in this day and age, it absolutely shouldn’t be. Given some of the outright disgusting conversations that I overhear on an average night out, I’m amazed that anything can be considered taboo in 2014, because many of us have the luxury of living in a no-boundaries society these days. Unless, of course, you’re talking about problems with the human psyche, in which case you might as well lock yourselves away now and resign yourselves to a life of only discussing this topic with trained professionals who are paid to listen. Not for public consumption. Nuh-uh. No, thank you. For the sake of this blog post actually going somewhere, let’s just put a pin in the notion that we can’t talk about mental health and pretend for a second that we can. Or, let’s be even more risqué and talk about mental health in relation to art, because that’s really what I’m interested in right now. After reading an article recently, I discove...

I’m fairly certain that I have a vague recollection of a lecturer once telling me that anyone who writes can call themselves a writer, but only someone who is published can call themselves an author. Is that how it works? Genuine question, because I’ve been wondering this for a while. I don’t know why, really, but I have massive problems with calling myself a writer. Whenever someone asks what I do, and I nervously tell them, I always say something like, ‘I’m trying to be a writer’, which doesn’t exactly sound like a wonderful preoccupation. On the other hand, when I answer, ‘Oh, I’m a writer’, I feel like an out and out fraud for putting myself in the same bracket as rich, famous, and fabulous writers that have gone before me. For a lot of people, when they hear writer they think of people like JK Rowling and EL James (bleurgh!) who have made a rather impressive living out of their writing; and, in case you haven’t quite guessed this already, I’m far from being in their league, and ...

When I was doing my undergraduate degree (in English and English language) I was introduced to the amazing Perfume by Patrick Suskind. I sort of fell in love with that book a little bit. It was like nothing I had ever read before, and nothing I’ve read since, as Suskind plummets readers into a world of vivid sensations and an outright peculiar existence in the form of his misguided protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. It’s stunning, descriptive, disgusting, and eerie, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Yesterday evening I found myself at a loose end and with 142 minutes to kill, so I decided it was time to watch the 2006 adaptation of this novel, fully loaded with preconceptions about how bloody awful it would be in comparison to the book. I was wrong. Last term as part of my current degree I took a module that explored the concept, interpretations, and uses of intertextuality (the old text within a text sort of principle, for anyone who hasn’t come across it). My understa...

I was asked to take part in this blog tour by a writer friend and, at the time, I hadn't actually set up this new little corner of the internet. However, now it's here, I thought it might be worth throwing my answers here, as well as on my other blog (Mad Hatter Reviews' blog space where I throw the odd rant and rave, which you can see for yourselves here:  http://www.madhatterreviews.co.uk/blog ). So, here goes!  The Writing Process What are you working on? Right now I’m focussing most of my time and attention on a potentially bizarre short story collection - which, I realise, warrants further explanation. I’m in the final stage of my Creative Writing MA, which involves producing a 25, 000 word document (20, 000 creative + 5, 000 critical) in a writing form of my choice. Writing short stories does feel like going against the grain for me, particularly given that when I started the degree I was predominantly interested in writing poetry; however, I now understand the i...

I’m currently doing a Masters degree in Creative Writing and, since beginning that degree, I’ve been asked more than once to have a think about what type of writer I am, what type of writer I want to be, will be, could be, should be… it never ends. I appreciate that I sound somewhat ground down by these considerations but truthfully, I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. I got into the habit of reading about writing, and sometimes writing about writing, and discovered that it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be. This morning I settled down to write a blog post, which is due to be published to my review website at some point tomorrow (although, it will probably be published here now, too), and in that blog post I just talked about writing. What I’m working on, why I write, how I write - and I bloody loved it! So I thought that maybe, writing about writing is writing worth doing, particularly if it’s something that I enjoy, and something that will ultimately help me to understand my ...