We've had some new followers to Writer in the Wilderness recently, as well as a few more who subscribe (I'm not sure what that actually means. I think the Piskies give them a nudge when I put a new post up).

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Why?


1) That first time you show your work to someone, breath held, eyes shut, heart knocking on your chest. Will they laugh? Smirk? Struggle to soften the blow that your work is rubbish? Be it a relative, friend, writing group or online acquaintance it takes guts to put your work out there. So, whatever the outcome, Congratulations! You’ve done the equivalent of opening your eyes in the dark.

2) That first time – lots of firsts here – you submit your story, be it one thousand or one hundred thousand words long. Why is this scary? Because the result more often than not will be a large brown envelope landing in your hall, bearing those brutal words Not for us. Yet you’ve confronted your fear, you’ve stepped well and truly into the aspiring writer’s Haunted House. One way out is the door of publication and to find this exit you must confront all manner of spooks – the dreaded synopsis, the hellish cover letter, the eternal rewrite, the shattered confidence… It takes a brave – some might say foolish person – to take this path.

3) Next you must hold your nerve and ride the two-faced ghost-train of success. You get an agent, get a contract and your day of publication arrives, yippee! But then, hello scary sales figures and alarming Amazon rankings and a devilish deadline for Book Two. And ultimately you must grapple that ghoulish question – will my contract be renewed?


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Here is the second in the series of interviews with published writers about giving up their day jobs. This time it’s crime writer David Armstrong, whose excellent last novel Written Out is set in a residential writing school and features Detectives Kavanagh and Salt. He has also written How Not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a Mid-List Author.

MT: What day jobs have you done?

DA: I was a hopeless case at secondary school, worked as a milkman as a kid, then in a decorating shop and stayed there, becoming manager of one of the owner’s shops at nineteen. I left after a couple more years and went ‘on the road’ as a bit of a hippy and did loads of jobs, in restaurants, a van driver, labourer, ice cream seller, all sorts, before going back to school, then on to university to read English.

MT: Anything in those day jobs that has inspired your writing?

DA: I think, generally, the more mindless the work, the better for the writer’s mind. Being a teacher for example, which I was for fifteen years, is demanding and is often drawing on the same resources that you might use as a writer. It’s rewarding but very tiring,too (notwithstanding the large number of writers who’ve been teachers).

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I was surprised, then, when the radiators were hot on Friday 23rd, when I arrived home from school. Not for long and not all of them – the bedroom and hall ones remained cold and the knob to make them hotter was stuck. Best not force them, I thought, after my disaster with the ‘persiana’ last week: I tugged the cord too hard and the blind disappeared into the box over the window.


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Happy Spooky Season!

To celebrate all things ghoolie and ghostie I have been carving pumpkins as you can see... the bottom right one was supposed to be a scary pig but looks more like a Spanish Civil War ringmaster. Maybe that's scarier.

My flash, Prayer in the Storm, written for their Past-themed Halloween contest, is up at MicroHorror today. Read and enjoy!

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An A-Z of Possible Worlds. Wow. I read this a little while ago and it's been something that's reminded me of how lucky I am to be a reader. It is packaged beautifully. The stories within it are simply excellent. It's...just...great. You can read the review I did of it here.

But I'm not just a reader. No. I'm a blogger as well. And, as a blogger I can do really cool and exciting stuff, like welcome writers I love here, to talk about their work. And, yes. That's just what I've done with A.C. Tillyer, author of said A-Z of Possible Worlds, who's stopped by here on her blog tour. So over to it. And look, isn't it just gorgeous...

So, Anne, An A-Z of Possible Worlds – what is it?

It's a box of 26 individually bound short stories, one for each letter of the alphabet. Imagine you're on a journey around your mind and each story is a possible destination on that journey. What would yours be like?


[Nik: mine? I dread to think. Colourful, terrifying, bleak, with occasional sunny spells.]



And who do you think it’s for?

Me, of course! And anyone who likes reading. I think it's particularly good for people who are traveling because you can just take one or two with you at a time and they fit in your pocket.




What does your ideal reader look like?

Again: me, of course! Actually, make that me as my teenage self, lying on my bed and reading the first books that really burrowed under my skin and have been with me ever since. That would be the ideal.


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Today, winter officially begins. Evenings darken. It’s hibernation time, time to turn inwards. This week also marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month: when tens of thousands of would-be writers dedicate thirty days to the sustained act of writing a novel – or at least, 50,000 words of one. Whoever chose November for this mini-marathon of writing was inspired. What better time to go for it than in this dark and otherwise uninspiring month?

Maybe NaNo should be renamed NiNoWriMo (Nike Novel Writing Month) since the overarching theme is Just Do It. This is the bungee-jump method of writing. The pinch-your-nose and leap method. The kamikaze method. No safety net. No pause for thought. No gentle mulling and meandering. This is the apply-the-seat-of-your-pants-to-the-seat-of-a-chair and never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-width method.


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I’ve just joined another writing site – oh yes I did. Some of my online friends from another site are there but under different names. I know that they belong to lots of other places, but wonder how they remember who they are? I can’t depend on my memory remembering who I am at any one time so must be consistent; there will only ever be ireneintheworld for me from now on. I have loads of old email addresses lying around in the ether, and domain names I’ve long forgotten; and MySpace places etc.



God, I come across pieces in my notebooks and stagger back in surprise, saying, ‘Did I write that?’

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I don’t believe in coincidences as a rule, but what happened last Sunday made me wonder.

I was attracted by the title of a book in the window of an upmarket souvenir shop: ‘Un sueño de Barro and Piedra’. The cover had a reproduction of a painting of a road leading into a village of red-roofed houses.



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If you're on Twitter, as well as looking me up (@nikperring) you may also want to have a nosy at #ilovethisbook which has had a bit of a revamp today, courtesy of Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) - it came about a couple of weeks ago when I was wondering which books I loved enough to recommend to pretty much anyone. There are quite a few, it turns out. And now there are a fair others posting the books they love enough to recommend to other people. So, I'd strongly suggest getting yourselves over there and getting involved. It's all good. I've ordered three or four already - some of which I'd never heard of.

***

And talking of books I love, Monday coming sees an interview here with A.C. Tillyer, author of An A-Z of Possible Worlds.

And let me tell you, it is something special. It's a collection of short stories, each about a possible world (ones where golfers are robots, or your fellow commuters might well be hunting you, or a whole country that's a great big labyrinth...) each bound seperately and presented beautifully in a claret box.

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