Writers Life – Something On My Mind: A Blog By Daniel Lyddon

Your Creative Value Is Not The Same As Your Personal Worth

Reconsidering Creativity and Rediscovering Enjoyment of the Creative Process.

One of the hardest lessons that I have learned in my career as a creative is that my creative value and personal worth are not one and the same. Having worked in film and broadcast since 2005, and having written my first novel at the tender age of 16, it might surprise people to learn that I didn’t figure this out until I was 39. It took the publication of my novel The Devil On God’s Doorstep and the resultant sales not meeting my expectations to provide the reality check required to learn this lesson.

Creatives tend to be at odds with the world in some way; to be a creative person means that on some level we identify that the world is lacking something, and believe that our creative process can offer a solution to filling that perceived void. It’s part and parcel of the artistic ego. For those of us working in the creative industries it can be as simple as having a story that we want to tell; in the case of remakes and reboots it’s often the result of someone saying “this is how I would tell that story”.

Part of the creative process involves listening to the artistic ego when it says “I am the one to tell this story” or, more often, “this is my story to tell”. It is the artist making the decision to create something, simply because the artistic ego says that we can, and should. To quote Richard Attenborough’s character in Jurassic Park, “creation is an act of sheer will” (I’ve listened to that speech a lot over the years).

The desire to create or contribute something new isn’t limited to artistic endeavours or the creative industries. In the business startup world, entrepreneurs identify a market need or a customer pain point that their startup can address through the provision of a product or service. Being a creative is by no means exclusive to artists – nor is having the desire to make a difference, have an impact on the world, or bring something new to the market.

Creativity is a fundamental, almost primal part of the human psyche, linked in some way to the sapience that our species developed. Sapience combines our ability to think as individuals, our ability to acquire knowledge, and our capacity to develop our intelligence as a result, all of which stems from the evolution of the human brain and the development of the ego in our species.

Creativity is a very natural process, and one way for us to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and dreams to others. We are all of us creative animals whether we work in the creative industries or not, and irrespective of whether we consider ourselves to be creative artists. It is part and parcel of the creative process that, when someone creates something that they consider to be of value, they assume that other people will be able to see the same value in it. If we dwell too much on this concept, if we spend too much time ascribing value to our creative endeavours, we can sometimes confuse the perceived value of our creative output with our own personal worth.

In the case of a writer such as myself, spending twenty years to bring a novel to publication, I have lived half of my life with a story in my head. Half of my entire existence on this planet has been spent imagining, shaping, writing, and editing a single story. The personal value of The Devil On God’s Doorstep for me, the meaning that that story has, the influence it has held over my life, and the weight that the story still holds over me – those things have been incredibly overwhelming. The lengthy creative process involved in taking that story from conception in March 2001, to publication in June 2022, has dominated and overshadowed my life to the extent that when I finally let go of it and released it to the world, it was never going to live up to my expectations.

Click the Affiliate Link above to purchase The Devil On God’s Doorstep in hardback, paperback and e-book.

My story is just that – my story – it doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything to anyone else. Just because I felt compelled to write a book, it doesn’t mean that anyone else has to feel compelled to buy it, let alone read it. Just because I took twenty years of my life to tell that story, it doesn’t mean that I am suddenly owed book sales that cover twenty years of even minimum wage. It may take an additional twenty years for the book to reach that kind of value. What has become imperative is that I move on, to other stories, and to finding a more time-efficient way of telling them.

During the two decades that I spent developing, writing and editing The Devil On God’s Doorstep, and certainly in the eight months or more spent taking it through the publishing process, the weight of the story and the time and effort I had invested in it were magnified in my mind. In order to make the story “worth” my time and effort, it seemed like I needed to generate book sales that would make my efforts financially “worthwhile”, and like most debut authors, those figures failed to materialise in the first year. This led me to question whether it was worth me taking all of that time to tell the story, which led me down a dark path of questioning whether my creativity was worth anything, and ultimately whether I was personally worth anything at all to the world or anyone in it.

A year down the line I can see where I went wrong, and where I did myself a disservice. Those who are further into their creative careers that myself would probably have seen it coming from far off, having most likely experienced their own versions of it at some point in the past. The thing that I lost sight of, the signpost that I missed along the way was that I spent half of my life enjoying the process of telling a story – a story that I conceived, featuring characters that I made up in my head. The outcome of that process – a book that people in multiple countries are buying, reading, and according the reviews, enjoying – is something entirely separate to the creative process itself.

The creative process and the creative output are not one and the same. The initial idea changed many times through the six drafts of the novel and the content that was published was roughly half of what was written in the early drafts. So much was cut out that didn’t serve the story, but was a necessary part of the creative process despite not making it all the way to the final published version. There exists so much more of the story, and I know so much more about the characters, that nobody else will know, or needs to know. The book that was published is not the same as the story that was conceived, and yet both versions, at either end of the creative process, were important in the telling of the tale.

Just as the creative process and output are not one and the same, I’ve come to realise that my creative work is not the same as my entire life. I’ve often thought of writing as a vocation or calling – I’ve gone as far as to say that it is part of my identity, because it has seemed so fundamental to me from an early age. I was writing stories from at least the age of seven, if not earlier. I taught myself to touch-type on an Atari keyboard plugged into an old Grundig television set long before I had a full grasp of the English language or knew the purpose of all the punctuation marks on the keyboard.

I have been a writer all of my life, and I have been writing novels for more than half of my current lifespan. On reflection, it’s only natural that I would consider it to be synonymous with my life itself. I now know that it is only one facet of my life – one branch of the tree – it is a job, it is work. Yes, it’s work that I enjoy, but it is one singular part of my life, and not my whole life in its entirety. My creativity feeds off my life experience, but it remains separate from the experience of life itself. Exposure and stimulus are so important to the creative process – they are a part of it – but a writer has to live in order to be able to write, rather than the other way around.

In dedicating so much of my lifetime to that story, I ended up neglecting the other parts of my life to a chronic degree, and when that story was told, when the book was published and out there in the world, I realised just how little else there was. Devoting so much time, effort and energy to my creative endeavours had skewed my perception to such a degree that the book just had to provide a value to my life equal to everything that I had sacrificed or neglected in order to bring The Devil On God’s Doorstep to completion. And when that failed to materialise, I fell into despair.

I automatically focused on the financial value of the book sales, as if the numbers would compensate me for the lack of perceived worth in the other areas of my life. Of course, the desired level of book sales didn’t materialise, leading me to consider that because the creative output didn’t manifest in financial value equal to what I had hoped for, then the creative process hadn’t been worth it. The story hadn’t been worth spending all that time on, and by extension, I hadn’t been worth it either.

How wrong I was. I know now that the creative process itself is worth far much more to me than the outcome ever will be. Creative expression, and freedom of creative thought, is something that I now know carries no price tag. No book sales, no publishing deal, no screen adaptation fee, will ever come close to how I felt and the journey that I undertook in the writing of The Devil On God’s Doorstep. The creative process holds a value to me that is beyond financial, and as a result it provides me with a sense of self-worth that is personal to only me, and beyond external empirical measure.

As a story-teller I am part of a tradition that stretches back through time from the modern streaming era to the very first cave paintings. Throughout history, individuals have communicated stories to one another via creative means. It is a very human process, an interaction between those who create a story, and those who consume it. There are two sides to the creative equation – the creation of an artistic work, and the consumption of it. I know from first-hand experience that it is easy for a creative to lose themselves in consuming the creative output of others, to the detriment of their own creativity. The Devil On God’s Doorstep originated in a time before social media, before mobile internet and streaming platforms. It also originated at a time in my life when I spent less time engaging with others’ output than creating my own.

Having published the book and marketed it online during these past twelve months, I became lost in the figures, the analytics and insights that are made available to us these days. I placed far too much importance and value on what social media platforms were telling me about my ‘reach’ and ‘interactions’ rather than focusing on serving the story. If the editing and publishing process had been about refining the manuscript of the novel so that it served the story, then surely the marketing efforts that promote the book should similarly serve the story?

What matters more to me is that I find enjoyment in the marketing of the novel, in whichever ad campaigns I run or promote. It’s important that I rediscover the joy of creative thinking and the value that adds to my life, beyond considering the financial worth of my efforts. A good story will sell itself, but in order for it to do that, people must be aware that the story exists. In the case of The Devil On God’s Doorstep, the published book is a product that needs marketing, and in order for the marketing to be effective, I have to find enjoyable ways of promoting the book that re-engage my creative process.

The lessons that I have learned in the last year are as follows:

Freedom of creative thought and expression are of utmost importance to me.
If I choose to tell a story from start to finish, then everything, both within and without that story, has to serve the needs of the story.
The creative process and the creative output are separate, and must be treated as such. They co-exist, but they are also independent.
My enjoyment of creativity has to outweigh any perceived material or financial benefit in order for me to continue engaging with it.
The journey of writing a book means more to me than the destination, but as with any journey, once I reached that destination I focused on where I was, rather than how far I had come.
The story doesn’t end with publication, if anything, it grows even larger once it has been released into the world.

If you’d like to read The Devil On God’s Doorstep, click the above Affiliate Link to read a free preview and purchase a copy from Amazon.

STAGE REVIEW: The Seagull

My mini review, as posted on the StageDoor app

Making sense of creativity, with Anton Chekhov and Anya Reiss

Last month an email from the StageDoor app landed in my inbox promoting a special offer on matinee tickets for the Jamie Lloyd Theatre Company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. I can’t say that I’m a fan of Chekhov, but I’d read good reviews about the production, and the ticket offer helped to sway me. It was the first time I’d ordered theatre tickets via StageDoor and I’m so glad that I did, because what I saw was very rewarding.

I’ve always considered Chekhov’s work to belong to the highbrow, pretentious pantheon of stageplays that I find uninteresting and boring. What I watched at the Pinter Theatre was entertaining, engaging, accessible and enjoyable. If I left Anya Reiss’ reworking of The Seagull with a new appreciation for Chekhov’s writing and a desire to see more, then I hold Reiss entirely responsible. I can no longer sit in a corner and frown and say Chekhov isn’t for me, because I found this update of The Seagull to be relatable and transformative, and I’ll certainly be buying another ticket. Anya Reiss, how very dare you.

From the marketing and the reviews I’d seen online I had some idea of the calibre of the cast, and a rough idea of what the play was about without knowing the details of the plot. Jamie Lloyd directs a modern version of The Seagull that feels relevant and refreshed for contemporary audiences. Some of the less praiseworthy reviews have criticised the spartan nature of the set design and staging of the production, in light of the ticket prices and the expected spectacle of a West End play. I’ll say this for the ticket price: it’s worth it for the cast, and that’s clearly where the money has been spent.

You won’t get elaborate set pieces and synchronised choreography for your ticket money – The Seagull isn’t that kind of show. What you will get is an interesting story well-told, featuring outstanding performances from an excellent cast. All ten of the players remain on stage for the duration of both acts, completely exposed by the harsh overhead lighting. If this constant exposure is unnerving for any of the actors, it doesn’t show: as the scenes flow one into the next, the characters freeze or turn away from the audience and simply disappear from your focus, despite the fact that the actors are there in plain sight the whole time. It would have been easy to use spotlights as a device to highlight those acting in each scene, but The Seagull doesn’t cloak its actors in darkness when they’re not performing. That you don’t spend your time looking at the frozen players in the background is testament to how well each actor commands your attention in their respective scenes.

The entire stage is boxed-in by a chipboard walls with austere industrial lighting above that lends a manufactured feel to the setting – because what is theatre, if not life manufactured? The on-stage props are limited to the kind of basic metal and plastic chairs you’d find in any hospital waiting room, so there’s very little to distract the attention from the performances. The opening scene that introduces us to a troupe of actors rehearsing a play has the feel of a group therapy session, and with the way the story unfolds between the characters, perhaps that’s just what it is.

The Seagull has a meta aspect to it that develops as the scenes progress: that of actors playing actors, in a play within a play. The show’s primadonna is the formidable Arkadina, brought to life by an indomitable Indira Varma, who finds herself struggling with the dwindling affections of her younger lover, the successful writer Trigorin, portrayed with great intensity by Tom Rhys Harries. Trigorin reluctantly falls for fangirling ingenue Nina, played with a cocktail of comedy and sincerity by Emilia Clarke. Nina is an aspiring actress who desires the level of fame that Trigorin seems not to enjoy, and in the earlier scenes it’s obvious that she desires the fame more than the man. Nina, in turn, is loved by Konstantin, another writer, wracked with earnest suffering by Daniel Monks. Unlike Trigorin he has yet to taste success or find fame, so Nina isn’t drawn to him as he’d like her to be, however he is loved after a fashion by his mother, the domineering Arkadina.

The play is boxed-in by these four corners of love as much as it is by the chipboard set design, with its story structured around the formation and dissolution of their respective relationships. As heavy and involved as that may sound, The Seagull is more often than not played for laughs that are duly awarded by the audience. Every time that Clarke’s Nina or Varma’s Arkadina professes a desire for fame, or despairs at not being a recognisable actress, it’s a verbal wink or a nudge to those familiar with their work elsewhere. A physical wink or a nudge that breaks the fourth wall would have pushed the play into the realms of farce, but Jamie Lloyd’s work doesn’t take the cast that far, maintaining a balance between the comedy of these moments with the severity of the greater story being told on stage.

There is a moment in the second act, when Nina appears to realise for the first time the price of fame, and of pretending to be someone else for a living. I was aware of the mood changing in the theatre during such moments, where the laughter dropped away suddenly and the audience was exposed to the weight of the tragedy unfolding, and the reality of the fame that Nina desires sets in. Of course, the audience is going to question how much of the actors’ own experience of their craft and the fame game informs their performances, but when the scenes seem ready to buckle under the dramatic pressure, a line will be delivered that lifts the audience up with yet another laugh.

The repeated delivery of such lines with bathos also serves to heighten the irony of the perceived in-jokes, making the audience laugh time and again. The comedy isn’t restricted to the performances of Indira Varma and Emilia Clarke, however: the whole story reverberates with wannabe stage actors portrayed by an impressive array of artists whose screen credits range from Silent Witness to Obi Wan Kenobi, from Casualty to Hustle, from Britannia to Game of Thrones. The cast alone is worth the ticket price, the performances they give are worth even more. Try as I may, I couldn’t find a weak link in the chain of performers on stage. These are actors worth the watch, every one of them, and if I were a drama student or even remotely interested in acting and performance, I’d be taking notes from this cast on how it should be done.

As a writer, I found myself affected by The Seagull in a different, unexpected way, and this is why it’s taken almost a full fortnight to gather my thoughts and write this review. My initial reactions posted to social media on the day I saw the play were understandably hyperbolic given my enthusiastic response to the play – now I’ve calmed down a bit, I can relate why. I was aware that the plot of The Seagull had something to do with an actress and a writer. I wasn’t aware that the play featured two writers. What I saw during that matinee performance was myself, split down the middle, with half each given to Tom Rhys Harries and Daniel Monks. For the first time ever, I saw myself on stage, and now I know what representation feels like.

I was fighting back tears during the first act, watching and feeling the depths of Trigorin’s doubts and despair – depths that I myself have dropped to as a writer. During the second act my face was in my hands as I witnessed and experienced Konstantin’s anguish. I felt seen, I felt understood, and a I felt less alone as a writer. I am not a gregarious writer, so I have little knowledge of other writers’ experience of the creative urges and the crippling self-doubt that often accompanies my creative output. I don’t share in my writing process, and my work does isolate me to an extent. Sitting in the Pinter Theatre, watching these two strangers who didn’t know me play my thoughts and feelings out on stage for all to see, made me realise that I’m not on my own, and I took great comfort from that.

When played out and observed correctly, theatre is supposed to be transformative, and this performance of The Seagull was indeed that for me. It helped me make sense of my creative struggles, and actually made me feel better about my artistic processes in a way that I think was long-overdue. If you are a creative of any kind, not just a writer, or if you have a friend, relative or colleague who is a creative, then I would recommend that you buy a ticket to watch The Seagull at the Pinter Theatre before the play closes on September 10th.

There’s plenty more that I could write about the effect that this play had on me, much of it complimenting my wellness journey of the past 20 months, but it would involve spoiling The Seagull‘s story. I’ll definitely be buying a ticket for a repeat viewing, and I’m also considering repeat visits with friends and family just to see if they understand me any better after seeing it for themselves.

In the current financial climate I’m aware that West End Theatre tickets aren’t high on the list of people’s priority bills (nor should they be) however I believe that creativity is something that helped maintain people’s sanity throughout the pandemic lockdowns. I doubt there is a single household where someone didn’t switch on a television, read a book or magazine, play a game, listen to the radio, to a music app or a podcast. I firmly believe that engaging with creativity is what kept us going throughout our respective isolation, and that continuing to enjoy creative works is essential to our wellbeing. The Jamie Lloyd Theatre Company and ATG tickets are offering £15 “rush tickets” for select performances of The Seagull for people under 30, key workers, and those in receipt of certain government benefits, therefore making West End theatre more affordable.

Click the above picture to purchase £15 tickets

Furthermore, if you belong to or work with a group that usually wouldn’t have the means or opportunity to enjoy live theatre in London, The Jamie Lloyd Theatre Company is offering free tickets to The Seagull and future West End Shows. I really like the ethic behind this: providing access to the arts to people who may not traditionally be able to engage with the theatre. Considering that the Company was also responsible for bringing James McAvoy in Cyrano de Bergerac and Jessica Chastain in A Doll’s House to the West End in recent years, I think that it would be well worth social groups and organisations registering for free tickets for forthcoming performances.

Click the above image to apply for free group tickets

How it is that Jamie Lloyd manages to attract the level of artistic talent that he does, and then corral the cast on stage like this, I don’t know. The sparse staging is ingenious as it requires the audience to engage the imagination, designing sets and scenery in the mind, and focusing on the dialogue and performances which are well worth your attention. From Sophie Wu’s brutally deadpan Masha as a foil to Emilia Clarke’s starry-eyed dreamer Nina, to the comedic delivery and timing of both Jason Barnett as Shamrayev and Mika Onyx Johnson as Medvedenko, the whole cast serves up something enjoyable to watch. Sara Powell’s Poyna easily gives one of the best-timed laughs by bringing a game of charades to an end, whilst I was more than happy to lead the applause for Indira Varma’s Arkadina when she demonstrates in the second act exactly how to seduce a writer. Robert Glenister and Gerald Kyd often provide subtle philosophical and reflective dimensions to the play as Sorin an Dorn respectively, and I do need to return to see what I may have missed from their performances during my first viewing.

For me, however, The Seagull was ultimately about Tom Rhys Harries’ Trigorin and Daniel Monks’ Konstantin. The play’s marketing may rely heavily on Emilia Clarkes’s star power, and the story is arguably about her Nina, but it’s Nina’s conflicted relationships with Trigorin and Konstantin that give flight to The Seagull. I don’t know how Tom Rhys Harries does it, other than to say that he “gets” creatives, and is obviously a damn fine actor. As for Daniel Monks: if you see his name attached to something, no matter what it is, buy a ticket and thank me later. Although many people will be going to see Emilia Clarke’s West End debut, she is but one among a stellar line-up gracing the stage. You can tell in the early scenes that the audience hangs on Nina’s every word, but the other characters that come to the fore are every bit as mesmerising to watch.

Fair play to Emilia Clarke for not choosing a role in a play that would have been all about her for her West End Theatre debut. Stunt casting, this certainly isn’t. Other productions may utilise a token screen star to drive the play, but The Seagull really is about the entire cast. Unlike some plays that I’ve seen in the past, it’s a true ensemble piece where the entire ensemble is showcased. Whether that is particular to this production; whether it’s Jamie Lloyd’s direction, Anya Reiss’ writing, or whether it’s the same in Chekhov’s original play, I can’t say, but I am definitely glad that I saw The Seagull at the Pinter Theatre last month. As my first theatre visit post-pandemic, this has certainly reignited my passion for the stage, and it was definitely worth the wait.

Twenty Years Ago I Ran Away To Italy To Write My Novel. This Is What Came Of It…

The Colosseum. Author photo, taken October 2002

The Devil On God’s Doorstep was, for a long time, a millstone about my neck. I ran away to Italy when I was 19 having almost finished the first draft. I wanted to see and experience Rome first-hand, to add the finishing touches to the manuscript that I thought would lend it a more authentic feel. As described in the blog post below, I packed in my day job in October 2002 and flew to Italy, having been told that I was “making a big mistake”. When I look back on it now, that trip was the making of me: making the decision to do something for myself, against the advice and wishes of others. It was my first solo trip out into the world, and the very first time that I introduced myself to people as a writer.

The Day I Became a Writer

Solo travel changes a person. When you only have yourself to motivate you, when you only have your wits and your own resources to rely on, when you have to do things for yourself because you choose to, and not because someone else tells you to – it changes you. You are you, and only you – not a parent, a child, an employee or any label that we give to ourselves or is given to us. You are just you when you travel alone, and once the initial rush of adrenaline and excitement fades you have to deal with yourself, and only yourself.

A lot of people can’t do that – a lot of people can’t deal with it, and they fold. I folded, that first time out on my own in the world. I think that I lasted a month. I returned to Wales, was offered my old job back, and turned it down. Thar wasn’t my life any more. I had discovered something new: I had discovered me.

I did what most writers do when they start out. I researched online how to get published. I bought a copy of The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook and began to approach literary agents. Back then you were ‘supposed’ to approach agencies one at a time, by mail, sending a manuscript sample hard copy in the post, with return postage so that your work was returned. An agency would on average take six to eight weeks to respond, and as ‘agents to to one another’ it was considered ‘bad form’ to approach more than one agent at a time.

Every eight weeks I would face the heartbreaking rejection of seeing my own handwriting as the thick brown return envelope came through the letterbox. Again, and again, and again, agencies rejected my work. The most common reason was that they ‘didn’t know how to place it in the market’. A religious thriller was apparently ‘a difficult sell’. After Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was published I thought that The Devil On God’s Doorstep would certainly find a place in the market, but the rejection slips changed to say that ‘the market is over-saturated with titles like this’. So my novel had gone from not being able to find a place, to finding itself in a place that was overcrowded.

What this process taught me was that, when I receive a rejection, it’s not that my work isn’t right – it’s just that it’s not right for the individual that read it. In his book Adventures In The Screen Trade (a title inspired by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ Adventures In The Skin Trade) the screenwriter William Goldman infamously said of the film industry: “nobody knows anything”. It’s true – in any part of the creative industries the rules can be written and rewritten at any point by the innovators and the disruptors. Those who step outside the comfort zone, who challenge the status quo – the change-makers – are the ones who succeed.

The Devil On God’s Doorstep may not have been right for the market at the time – it may not have conformed to industry norms or agents’ expectations – but it was right for me. It would take 21 years and 6 drafts of the novel to complete the story and tell it the way I that I wanted to tell it. It’s entirely possible that a literary agent in 2022 would take a different view of the final draft that one of the earlier versions – I know that I do. When I revisited the novel at the end of 2021 I was determined to rescue it from years of doubt that had destroyed the story. I had read so many books about writing, read blogs, listened to podcasts about ‘how it should be done’ and I had lost my way over the years. Life…uh, got in the way.

Last year, I began piecing the story back together so that I could self-publish it via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Advances in the culture and technology of the publishing industry have enabled me to streamline the process from writing to publication. It took months of uneasy editing – knowing that I had to remove large swathes of writing from the manuscript. I wanted the book to reflect the writer that I am today, rather than solely being a testament to the writer I was as a teenager. The story also had to be changed to include contemporary advances in genetic science and reflect the way that Vatican politics has changed since the Papacy of Jean Paul II.

The final result is now an Amazon exclusive title until the end of 2022, in hardback, paperback and eBook format, available in multiple countries worldwide. When I started this journey all those years ago, I didn’t know it would take this long. I didn’t know that it would involve this much work. Now it’s done, I feel a sense of relief and release, but also an astonishing achievement. I published my book my way; a way that suits me. It wasn’t by any means an easy or ideal process, but I made the journey step by step, and I took The Devil On God’s Doorstep from concept to publication.

Twenty-one Years In The Making: How The Devil Came To God’s Doorstep

The best stories show up when you least expect them

One March 14th, 2001, a little over a fortnight before I turned 18, I found myself flanked by my parents at a Cardiff University Open Day wondering what the hell I was doing there. My generation of school-leavers had been caught up in the fallacy that in order to have a “good job” or “be successful” in life, you had to have a university degree. Some of the worst years of my life were spent in the conventional education system, exhausting myself on the academic treadmill, and by the time I was sitting my A-levels I had had my fill.

Looking back, I fervently wish that I had left school at 16. I had wanted to be a writer since I taught myself to touch-type around aged 7-8. Successive English teachers had convinced me that to achieve this I needed a degree in creative writing. If you read my blog, you’ll discover what I had always known deep down inside: they were wrong. I hold the belief that all a writer needs are the basic tools of writing: anything from a stick in the sand upwards. If you write, you are a writer. We have other terms for professional writers: author, playwright, poet, lyricist and so on. Fundamentally, to be a writer you just have to write.

More eloquent and experienced writers than myself have suggested that all writers begin as readers. Writing, whether professionally paid or otherwise, begins as a love affair with the written word. Whether the result of parents reading to their children, or teachers showing students how words are constructed, it begins with a love of words and the joy of a story being told.

On that day in 2001, I finally made up my mind that university wasn’t for me. I wanted out of the education system. I wanted to get away from the pressure of grades, and the mentality that a person’s merit or worth is based on an exam result or letters after their name. I remember listening to a lecture about Old English poetry and feeling as if I were having an out of body experience, like I was trapped in someone else’s life. I still applied for universities, got offers, accepted one, deferred it for a year at the 11th hour, and then cancelled my place on the course when I was 19. I knew all the way along, from 17 years of age, what I would do. I just kept it to myself.

That day in the lecture theatre I got talking to my parents about Professor Severino Antinori, an Italian embryologist who was in the news at the time talking about his work in genetics and cloning in Italy. I remarked on the irony of him working in genetics in a country that, at the time, seemed opposed to gene therapy due to the Catholic teachings about the Sanctity of Life of the human embryo. I coined the phrase “The Devil On God’s Doorstep” to describe Antinori’s work in genetics taking place a metaphorical stone’s-throw from the Vatican.

I remarked that it sounded like a good book title, and my mother suggested I write it down. My adolescent capriciousness told me that I’d remember it if it was any good, but Mam wrote it down anyway on the brochure for the university open day. I, of course, forgot about it, but a few weeks later I remembered she had written something down and I dug the brochure out. In my writer’s journey I have always felt that the stories that began with a title were the most troublesome. More often than not, I complete a story and then find a title that fits. The Devil On God’s Doorstep stuck somehow.

To date, it is the largest project I have undertaken that began with a title. If Mam hadn’t written the title down that day I would most likely have forgotten it as well as the conversation and the idea that it spawned. The book is dedicated to my mother for opening up the door in so many ways, and the dedication in the opening pages is a small sign of my gratitude. The Devil On God’s Doorstep is now available in hardback, paperback and eBook format as an Amazon Exclusive until the end of 2022. You can order yourself a copy using this link:

How A Childhood Act of Defiance Created a Storytelling Tradition

The Wales Millennium Centre perches on the edge of Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay as both a monument to the city’s cultured history, and a home for its contemporary creative output. The building’s exterior is fashioned of four different colours of Welsh slate arranged in a technique similar to the traditional dry stone walling seen in the Welsh countryside, with a roof crafted of textured steel that recalls the importance of the steel industry in Wales in the last century.

Wales Millennium Centre: Photo By Author

First-time visitors to the building are often awestruck by the inscription in both English and Welsh, cast in glass letters over two metres high that graces the front of the building: “In These Stones Horizons Sing” and “Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr O Ffwrnais Awen”, the words of Wales’ first poet laureate, Gwyneth Lewis, that were set to music by the Welsh composer Karl Jenkins for the Centre’s inauguration in 2004. What many don’t realise, however, is that the two lives aren’t a translation of one another. Translated into English, the words “Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr O Ffwrnais Awen” actually mean “Creating Truth Like Glass From The Furnace Of Inspiration”.

As you approach the Wales Millennium Centre through Butetown, along James Street, the word directly in front of you almost dead centre above the doors is the word that began it all: Awen. In every culture that has developed around the world there is an origin for the creative process. Ancient Greece had the nine Muses: daughters of Zeus who were the goddesses of creative inspiration. The Hindu Vedic tradition has Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music, art and speech. In Meso-America the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl was worshipped as a god of arts, crafts, and knowledge. Each of these has been created to make sense of the source of creative inspiration. In Wales, we have The Awen.

Deriving from an Indo-European linguistic root meaning ‘to blow’, “Awen” is the Welsh word for “inspiration”. In terms of its origin, it’s very similar to the Greek: “inspire” comes from the moment that the goddess Athena breathed life into the first human beings created by Prometheus for Zeus. To be inspired is to receive the breath of the gods, which creates life. It is fitting, therefore, that “Awen” has a similar divine origin.

The Awen was the name given to the cauldron belonging to the witch Ceridwen, who tradition records lived in North Wales in the 6th Century CE. Depending on which version of the story that you follow, Ceridwen was either a witch or goddess, and so her origin most likely predates the time in which she was supposed to have lived. The Ceridwen of the 6th Century is possibly a figure created to retro-fit an ancient pagan deity as a villain in a more Christianised narrative. The Awen was a her Cauldron of Transfiguration – a source of poetry and inspiration in the Welsh Celtic tradition. She is believed to have lived on the shores of Lake Bala in North Wales with her family, and a servant boy known only as Gwion Bach.

Tradition records, rather cruelly, that Ceridwen’s son Morfran was ‘ugly and stupid’, and so the witch spent much of her time concocting elixirs and potions to try and relieve Morfran of his ‘ailments’. Gwion Bach was tasked with stirring the cauldron, and on the day that Ceridwen finally mixed the perfect potion she warned her servant boy not to taste it: the first three drops from the Awen would hold all of its magic, and the rest of the potion would be poisonous. Whether it was nervous fear at the task in hand, or whether he was just a bored child not paying attention, Gwion Bach felt the cauldron spit three droplets of the hot liquid on to his thumb. He instantly sucked his thumb to relieve the pain, and received the gifts of the Awen. In an instant, he became good-looking, intelligent, and was able to change his physical form at will.

Afraid of what he had done, Gwion ran away by turning himself into a rabbit. When Ceridwen discovered what had happened to her potion, she was enraged, and tradition records that she turned herself into a dog to chase after the servant boy. There follows a chase where both of them change shape many times – something reminiscent of the sequence in the 1963 Walt Disney movie The Sword In The Stone where the wizard Merlin and the witch Madam Mim compete in a ‘Wizard’s Duel’ for the young King Arthur’s life, which includes a shape-shifting challenge.

The chase ends with Gwion turning himself into a grain of corn only to be eaten by Ceridwen in the form of a hen. Ceridwen became pregnant, and planned to kill the child, which she knew would be Gwion Bach. When her baby was born, the boy was so beautiful that she didn’t have the heart to kill it herself, so she tied it up in a bag and threw it into the River Dyfi to let nature take care of it for her. The bag was found by fishermen who were catching the famed Dyfi Salmon (apparently one of the best types of salmon in the world) who brought it to the court of the Prince Elffin.

The baby was named Taliesin, meaning “radiant brow”, because of his good looks. After Prince Elffin placed the infant Taliesin on his saddle, the baby apparently began to recite poetry and make predictions about the future. Taliesin would grow up to earn the title bard ben beirdd (“bard of bards”). He was the most favoured bard at the Court of King Arthur, chief of the Celtic bards, and alongside the bards Aneirin, Talhearn, Blwchfardd and Cian, is one of the Five British Poets of Renown mentioned in the Historia Brittonium which dates to the 9th Century CE.

Whether the Tale of Taliesin is an accurate biographical account, or one retro-fitted to merge Celtic bardic tradition with the imported Christian stories, the seed of the surviving story is that childhood defiance, represented in the act of sucking a thumb when told not to by a parental figure, is the source of Celtic storytelling inspiration. As the Celts originally didn’t write their stories down, our stories changed subtly with each subsequent generation in the telling of oral tradition. This mirrors the way in which each generation of children in some way defies the generation above it. Children defy their parents, and do things differently, bringing up their own children in a slightly different way, and so society changes. If we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t evolve.

When I moved to Cardiff Bay in 2021, during a year of intense and prolonged personal change, I would often see the word Awen inscribed at the front of the Wales Millennium Centre, and it would always make me think of Gwion Bach and the three drops from the Awen on his thumb. When I decided to self-publish my novel after 21 years of writing, I chose the name Gwion Press for the publishing company that I formed. The logo for Gwion Press is a hand with the thumb sticking up. On the thumb are three droplets, representing the three drops of potion from the Cauldron of Awen. They are arranged in a similar configuration to the three rays of The Awen – the symbol of modern druidism that has been adopted by Neodruids following the creation of the modern age Gorsedd Cymru by the poet and master forget Iolo Morganwg in the 18th Century CE.

The first book to bear the Gwion Press logo is my debut novel The Devil On God’s Doorstep which I released as an Amazon exclusive in June 2022. All subsequent releases will carry a variation of this logo, and so in some small way, the tradition continues. It’s also fitting that the first library in the world to stock a copy of the book was Maesteg Library in South Wales, which is one of the libraries in the area where I grew up, now owned by the Awen Cultural Trust.

*The Devil On God’s Doorstep* at Awen Library Maesteg. Photo By Julie Golden.

My Four Favourite Quotes About Writing

Words of wisdom that have helped me along my writer’s journey

I have considered myself to be a writer for almost my entire life. I taught myself to touch-type when I was seven or eight, as I began what could technically be called a novel, that thankfully no longer exists. Aged sixteen I wrote my first novella The Soul Snatcher of Carreg Brân, and aged eighteen I began writing my first full novel, The Devil on God’s Doorstep. Twenty-one years on, I will finally see the book in print next week (as will everyone else, for that matter…) which marks the culmination of a massive chapter in my life — the closing of one book, and the opening of another. You can read a bit about my writer’s journey here:

My Writer’s Journey

It hasn’t been easy. I wouldn’t trade the journey for anything now that the novel is coming to fruition, of course, but it’s been a huge effort to get to this point. From the early excitement of committing a new idea to paper, to drudging through the first draft and successive redrafts. From writer’s block to repeatedly abandoning and rediscovering the manuscript, to pulling it apart, forcing it back together again, shaping and reshaping. The despair, the self-doubt, the doubts of others, and the sheer hopelessness that comes with each rejection: each of these experiences has taken its toll upon both myself and my work.

Through it all, though, there is a thread: to be a writer, or any creative for that matter, is to be part of a tradition that is almost as old as humankind itself. There is a need to tell a story, whether fact or fiction, to communicate and illustrate the ideas that arise in the mind of the creative. There is a direct line running from early cave paintings and petroglyphs inscribed in ancient sun-baked rock faces, to typing on a keyboard or scribbling with a stylus on a tablet screen. So many people have come before me — writers, artists, all of them — feeling the same pressures, the same thrills, the same highs and lows. I am by no means the first person to struggle to tell a story and then labour to see it in print.

Throughout this process, there have been the words of the others: motivating me, reminding me that I’m not alone, inspiring me, and help me make sense of the madness that comes from stoking the creative fire. Here are my four favourite quotes about writing, by other writers — people far more adept at discussing the writing process than myself — words that have helped me along the way, and may help you too, if you are embarking on a similar path (or else lost in the brambles on the hike through the writer’s wilderness). I’ve mounted them on some meme-worthy photographs using Canva Pro, and written a few words underneath to describe their effect on me…

“I felt that either one was or wasn’t a writer, and no combination of professors could influence the outcome” — Truman Capote.

First and foremost: I didn’t go to university. I didn’t study a creative writing degree. I bought, borrowed, and read books. A writer, first and foremost, is a reader. The words of others inspire us to write words of our own. My book collection, which is almost a thousand-strong, was my education in writing. I reasoned early on that no piece of paper would “qualify” me as a writer better than the printed manuscript of the words that I write myself. I do not need letters after my name to prove to myself, or anyone else, that I am a writer, and that I enjoy writing. If you have a talent, for writing or otherwise, it’s either in you or it isn’t — no school, course, or combination of letters after your name will make you a writer or a creative if you aren’t one already.

2. “Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others” — Virginia Woolf.

This is a nice follow-on from the Capote quote, and one that resonates into other areas of my life beyond the creative. If we pay too much heed to the opinions of others, we get bogged down in processing their view of us and our works, rather than focusing on the work at hand. From my own experience: I was told by more than one agent early on that they wouldn’t know “where to place” The Devil on God’s Doorstep in the market, the inference being it wouldn’t sell. After I completed the second draft of the manuscript, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was published, and the response changed from not knowing if anyone would buy my novel to “the market is saturated with books like this right now — why would someone pick yours over one of the others?”

As a young writer, I took this too much too heart, deconstructing my work, trying to work out why anyone would want to read my words, and allowing the doubts of others to become self-doubts. Today, I don’t write for the market — I write for myself and my own enjoyment. If other people enjoy my work, if it resonates with them, that’s just icing on the cake. I have to write for me, because if I don’t, I’ll lose interest in what I’m writing, and I won’t complete the work. I have to write for my interest and enjoyment, because that’s what keeps me writing.

3. “Writers don’t have lifestyles. They sit in little rooms and write” — Norman Mailer.

This one’s a little tricky. As writers, we need to experience life to be able to write about it. We need to get out there to act and react, to inspire and be inspired. If we aren’t part of life, our words won’t come to life. The flip-side, of course, is that life gets in the way. There are so many demands on our time, especially our free time, and as no-one starts out as a career-writer, our ‘writing time’ is often confined to our rapidly-reduced free time.

Social commitments, the latest streaming hit, obsessing over world news that we have no control over but tell ourselves we need to absorb in every detail — all these things take us away from our writing. We procrastinate, we do anything but write, yet sooner or later, we have to return to our work. If you are a writer, you write. That is all there is to it at the most fundamental level — to get to the end of your story, you have to actually write it all, and that means sacrificing the time spent doing other things in favour of finishing your story.

4. “We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to” — W. Somerset Maugham.

This one hits home with me most of all. I am a writer. It’s one of many hats that I wear, but it is the one that fits the best. Being a producer is my day job, and I now have business interests in other sectors beyond the creative industries, but a writer is something I am. It is inherent to my identity. It is there running through my core. It is how I define myself. It is that which provides me with strength when I need it the most: when I feel I have none. It is the flame that burns even when I am cold; the light that shines even on the darkest of nights.

For this reason, writing — the expression of my ideas — is a compulsion. It is my preferred form of communication. I am much more adept at expressing myself through the written word than anything spoken. I am more confident and eloquent in text than I ever am vocally. That is just how I have ended up as a person. Therefore it is important, and essential, that I write and continue to write. It is how I interact and communicate with those around me. It is how I am most myself.

I hope that this was of interest to you. If anything, it’s given you an insight into what makes me tick, and why I write. If you are a creative in any form, especially writing, then perhaps its helped you make sense of your own creative process. To be a creative is to look at the world with a critical eye and say “I can make it better”.

It starts with you — your idea for a story that you believe will entertain people, or a painting that you believe will brighten up a dull room, or that app that you believe will make life a little more efficient, or that dish that you believe will encourage someone to try an ingredient they haven’t tasted before. It starts with you creating something in spite of your own resistance, in spite of the doubts of others, in spite of the pressures or the attractions of the world outside. You take time to create. You do you, above all else, and at all cost.

What I’ve found as I’ve completed my work, is that people’s attitudes change from “you can’t do that!” to “how did you do that?” to “can I do that?” — the fruits of your creative labours will inspire change in others, however great or small, and the ripple that you started will grow beyond your own sphere of influence. Not just because your idea was great, and not only because you didn’t listen to the nay-sayers, but because you carried on, regardless — you stayed true to the course, you focused on your end goal, and you achieved something through your process and your journey.

If you haven’t made a start already, make a start. If you’ve already started, keep going. Don’t stop until you are finished — not when someone else tells you you’re finished. Keep going, keep dreaming, keep thinking, keep creating, keep writing. Don’t give yourself any option other than finishing your work, however long it takes. Engage with the different aspects of your life, but always come back to your creativity: it will give you reason, meaning and purpose in the times when you feel they are lacking elsewhere.

Playing With Fire: Bipolar Disorder And The Creative Struggle

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I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder following a breakdown when I was twenty-three. Despite having been previously treated for anxiety and depression and other diagnoses including cyclothymia, it came as something of a shock. I had always been “healthy” as far as I was concerned — going to the gym regularly, eating “properly” — but there was a whole other aspect of my health that I had neglected throughout my life. My mental health. When my doctor sat me down and explained what bipolar disorder was, I seemed like a classic case.

Looking back, it comes an as little surprise that something would go wrong. Such is the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight. Ten months before my breakdown I had started my own business in the most volatile and untrustworthy of industries: film. A combination of the loss of a vital production contract and a sudden disappearance of government support left me like a fish gasping for air, but rather than calling it quits I decided to power on through the stress.

The dream had begun in Hollywood, with a research trip I undertook with my business partner one Christmas — the exchange rate was good, the lifestyle was better, the people both curious and welcoming. We were bright young things with a promising future ahead of us, and a three-part docu-series and a short drama behind us. The seemingly endless possibilities dried up soon after we returned to the UK, to be replaced by much knocking on closed doors and banging heads against walls.

There was a brief respite from the encroaching despair with a trip to the Cannes Film Festival to debut my first short film at the Short Film Corner of the Marche du Film. I felt on top of the world again, but would soon return to another slump in the UK. My life seemed destined to follow a roller-coaster of highs and lows, a cruel mimicry of the mood swings that I would end up enduring.

The film was something I had fallen into by accident. From an early age I had wanted to be a writer, and in retrospect, the obsession with writing, the late-night drives to complete work, were probably early symptoms of my condition. I completed my first novella aged sixteen, my first full novel at twenty-one, and have been unable to secure publishing interest in either, had simply decided to move on. I had moved into filming events — a lesser passion, but one that seemed to have better prospects. That led to arts coverage and writing documentary voiceovers, and the alluring dream of owning my own production company.

Grandiose plans are themselves another symptom of the disorder, not that I recognized that at the time. I was just burning with creative fire, a desire to write my stories, and see them played out on film. Sometimes that fire burned quickly to embers, other times it was an all-consuming blaze. There were times when I thought that having bipolar disorder made me a more creative person and other times when I thought that being creative made the symptoms more acute. It was as if, without the proper treatment, my chosen career was slowly killing me.

I am by no means the first person of a creative nature to have been both blessed and cursed in this way. From Vincent Van Gogh to Ernest Hemingway, the arts contains a whos-who of bipolar and cyclothymic patients. Hollywood is no exception: famous faces diagnosed with the disorder include Carrie Fisher and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Whether I label myself as a writer or filmmaker, I appear to have plenty of company where my mental illness is concerned. It seems that people with the disorder gravitate to the arts sector and its related professions.

I’m conscious of the fact that three out of the four people I named in the last paragraph died in circumstances related to their mental health. “Outlook not so good” to quote the magic 8 balls. Although I choose to live with, as opposed to suffering from, my illness, suffering is part of the deal. Some days are worse than others. It is natural for writers to struggle to write on occasion, but those times are compounded by depression and not being able to get out of bed of a morning. Over the years I’ve noticed that the dreaded writer’s block often correlates with a visit from the dreaded black dog. Such is life.

The flip side is that bouts of mania can manifest themselves in long periods of creative writing (the beginnings of this article are one result). These bursts of creativity produce a glut of short film scripts or the first drafts of short stories, only to dry up when I burn out and the mania subsides. Whilst it feels great at the time, the disappointment and self-doubt that arises from an incomplete project can be crippling, and so the pendulum swings the other way and depression sets in. My work, the career path that I have chosen for my life, seems to directly affect my mental health and not just vice versa.

I must be a glutton for punishment. I do know that I am addicted to stress and perform well under pressure provided that said pressure is self-inflicted. My life would probably be easier, and healthier if I chose to do something else with it. There are a myriad more sensible options out there, but the film industry itself is addictive, and there is nothing else like it. I’ve come to realize that I am something of a risk junkie, betting it all each time I choose to back a new project with time and creative effort, always with mixed results.

The fire warms and burns me and yet I continue to fuel it, to watch it grow, and to get closer to it the brighter it burns. One day it will likely consume me altogether and the illness will have its way with me. Until then I will continue to struggle with it, making the best of it, working with it to create something out of nothing. People who play with fire get burned, but they are also warmed and illuminated. I’d rather feel the benefits of the flames and risk everything, than not feel them, and risk nothing at all.

Five Authors Who Have Influenced My Writing

You are what you read!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, if you want to be a better writer, you have to read. Read far and wide, across a range of genres, discovering new words, and new worlds. If you’re a script writer, then read scripts and screenplays; if you’re more of an author then read books. I have something like four full bookcases (thanks Ikea!) and a few extra piles of books taking up floorspace in my home — each book has been read at least once, with many being read twice, and some three or four times.

I became a writer as a direct result of reading, and being inspired by, other writers’ work. As a child I was brought up on Grimm’s Fairytales, Aesop’s Fables and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Fantasy was always my preferred genre, and as I grew up, my taste in books remained the same (although I tend to skew towards the gothic these days). The following is a list of writers who have influenced, and continue to influence me, and my writing.

1. J.R.R. Tolkien

Where to begin? “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit” — the opening line of Tolkien’s The Hobbit kicks off the world-renowned children’s tale that was my introduction to Middle Earth. I read straight through it and on to The Lord of the Rings in my adolescence, devouring Tolkien’s legendarium. His work is high fantasy at its best — and reading The History of Middle Earth (which I am still collecting…) taught me everything I needed to know about world creation and the fantasy genre. I still dip into Christopher Tolkien’s collection of his father’s works, using them as a learning tool to become a better writer. They aren’t the easiest of reads, but once you get into Middle Earth, it is completely absorbing.

2. Terry Pratchett

I discovered the late, great, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of books in my teens. There are so many of them that I don’t remember which one I started with. I know that Wyrd Sisters was one of the early ones I picked up, before going back to the beginning and reading The Colour of Magic. There are too many favourites to mention, but if you’re looking to get into Pratchett’s work, I would suggest using The Wee Free Men as a starting point, and reading through the Tiffany Aching books before going into the novels. The Tiffany Aching series is meant for younger readers, but has plenty to offer adults, and is a way of easing yourself into Discworld, as some of the main novels can be a bit of a handful to get into at first.

3. John Connolly

I have to admit, I’m not usually into horror, but there was something about the cover of Connolly’s The White Road (the fourth in his Charlie Parker series of novels) that jumped out on me from the bookshelf. After reading that I went back and started the series properly with Every Dead Thing. The fusion of supernatural horror in a gripping thriller had me hooked, and has ended up with me following the author into other worlds outside of the Parker novels. If you want to dip into his writing without committing to a full series, I’d recommend the short story collection Nocturnes as a good entry point.

4. C S Lewis

Who doesn’t love a bit of Narnia? I absorbed The Chronicles of Narnia as a child aged ten or thereabouts. I started with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which remains my favourite of the series) before going back to the beginning and reading them in sequential order. I think that the central three books ( The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) are the best-written of the series. If memory serves me correctly, I saw the TV series in the late eighties/early nineties before discovering the books. Naturally I snapped them up when they were released on DVD decades later! Like Tolkien’s work, The Chronicles of Narnia books are a series that I go back to on occasion to read again as an adult.

5. Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper was another writer I discovered in childhood, when I picked up a copy of The Dark is Rising. Part of The Dark is Rising Sequence ( Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree) which saw Cooper blending contemporary children’s adventure stories with British myths and folklore. The series tells a tale of “The Old Ones”, a group of people with certain magical powers, fighting the forces of the gathering Dark. The books are littered with references to Arthurian legends, and The Grey King is set almost entirely in my home country of Wales, which was a rarity.

Honourable Mentions…

Dylan Thomas — I guess that, being a Welshman, I was bound to stumble across Dylan Thomas’ work at some point in life. Under Milk Wood and A Child’s Christmas in Wales are perennial favourites. Later this year I hope to be adapting one of his short stories for the screen as part of my day job at Seraphim Pictures.

Robin Jarvis — I discovered Robin Jarvis’ Tales from the Wyrd Museum in my teens, and absolutely loved it. Adapting Scandinavian myths and relocating them to 20th Century England is no mean feat, but Jarvis pulls it off with this trilogy set in a fictional museum in London run by three sisters, the Fates of ancient legend. I’ve read and re-read them over the years, and think that they deserve the big screen treatment!

Colin Dann — I used to correspond with Colin Dann when I was a child, being a fan of his The Animals of Farthing Wood series. I also enjoyed his standalone book A Legacy of Ghosts, which was partially set in West Wales and features some Welsh mythology. I highly recommend any books by Colin Dann to young readers.

I guess it was inevitable that, being a big reader, I had ambitions to become a writer. I wrote my first novella at sixteen, started my first novel at nineteen and went on to write my first short screenplay at twenty-two. With the arrival of the internet, social media, and platforms like Vocal, I am able to continue my writer’s journey. If you’re still reading, I’d just like to thank you — having readers (especially those who tip!) and an audience for my work keeps me going! 🙂

The Death Of My Inner Poet

How a single job interview changed me as a writer

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During my late teens I was a bit of a tragic poet. What I lacked in long hair and open-collared shirts I made up for in obscure rhyming verse that people either found depressing or just didn’t understand. Writing novels was always the long-term goal, but poetry seemed to come more easily to me in my teens, and I had won a few local prizes for my ‘work’ and even had a poem published in an anthology. It seemed to flow more easily through me from brain, to pen, to page, so at that time I preferred writing poetry to prose.

That would change with a job interview. I was already planning to leave my day job and run off to Italy to write my first novel (which I ended up doing, although the book itself remains unpublished) when a job opportunity came up which threatened to derail my schemes. Same organisation, different department, but working in the arts! Sure, it was arts admin, but it was working within the sector that appealed to me. I had applied for the job on a whim before planning the Italy trip, and the latter had completely pushed the former from my mind. I was surprised when I was offered the job interview, but took the opportunity even though I was almost 100% sold on leaving for Italy.

I won’t bore anyone with the details of the interview — they are all much of a muchness. The one thing I will share – the most important, and awful, part of the experience was the fact that one person on the interview panel laughed at my CV. Laughed. What was so funny about my CV, you may wonder? I wondered the same. It turns out that in the section dedicated to my personal interests, I had put down that I liked to write poetry in my spare time. The person thought this was worth laughing at, and laughed, to my face, at the very notion that I considered myself some kind of ‘poet’.

I stumbled through the rest of the interview, didn’t get offered the job, and give or take a week, was off to Italy where I wrote the first and part of the second draft of my novel. It didn’t push me to running away — I’d pretty much decided on that anyway — but it did change me as a writer. I haven’t written poetry since. And by that, I mean that I haven’t even attempted, haven’t even wanted to. My inner poet died that day because of that one person. I have written consistently, transferring from prose to scripts and then on to screenplays, but never poetry.

Incidentally, years later, as a camera operator covering the arts (there’s that word again!) my path crossed with the same individual on a number of occasions. I wasn’t recognised or remembered, wasn’t treated as a laughing stock. Perhaps I came across as something of a ‘professional’ with my equipment strapped to my back, someone who knew what they were doing and what they were talking about. As I moved away from the camera and into production management we moved in different circles so our paths no longer crossed.

I’ll never forget the moment in the interview of being laughed at. The fact that my poetry was singled out, without having been read or demonstrated, made it worse. I have no intention of ever seeking out the person to speak about it, and similarly have no intention of going back to poetry any time soon. If there’s one positive to take from the experience, it’s that it galvanised me to write the novel. Leaving the poet behind allowed me to become the author that I am today. Had I carried on with poetry, I may never have written the novel, the short stories, and the essays that I have done since then.

The experience changed me as a writer, but didn’t beat me down. This is the first time that I’ve spoken about it publicly. It still smarts, but like I said, it didn’t get the best of me. The poet in me may have died that day, but what arose in his place was someone better and stronger.

2020: A Year In The Writing

Reflecting on another year in my writer’s journey

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My only work-based resolution for 2020 was to write a short film script each month. Only 10–15 pages apiece — nothing too taxing. I figured that as long as I kept writing, I would stay motivated, stay productive, and somehow stay happy and healthy. Then Covid-19 reared its ugly head, we got locked down for a few months, then a second time for a few weeks, and before you know it I’m here at the end of the year, looking back wondering what the hell happened!

With some time to spare, now seems as good a time as any to go back to that resolution and take stock of the year. So far in 2020 (there are still a few weeks to go!) I’ve written 10 short film screenplays, one of which — The Last Christmas Tree — is being adapted into a short film by my production company Seraphim Pictures (eyeing a Christmas release, too, which would top off the year nicely). I’m aiming to write another two shorts before the end of the month, so that I’ve kept January’s resolution.

In other news, this year saw me entering a short story competition, on a different online writing platform, which was new territory for me. I didn’t place or anything, but the boost of seeing people reading my story The House on Juniper Lane and the feedback I had from it put a fire in me and to date I’ve written eight short stories since October, with another two coming before Christmas.

That leads nicely into self-publishing, which is completely new to me. I’ve always stayed away from vanity publishing — it’s not for me — but the technological revolutions in the publishing industry over the last decade or so have made the idea and the reality of self-publishing more appealing and achievable. By the end of this year (once those last two short stories are written!) I’ll be publishing a volume of ten short stories called More Than a Little Scared. It’s a test, more than anything, to see if I can make self-publishing work for me.

So far I’ve selected Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Rakuten Kobo and Google Play Books as marketplaces for the book, which I’ll launch as an e-book, and if there’s enough demand, maybe an on-demand paperback — hardbacks are definitely beyond my means at the moment! There’s a lot to consider, including ISBN purchases, cover designs and marketing materials (not to mention marketing strategies) so I’m sure I’ll have more than enough to keep me occupied in the coming weeks!

I’ve got ideas for follow-up short story collections for 2021 & 2022 as I’ve really enjoyed the process do far. Providing I don’t lose the plot (pun intended!) with the publishing side of things, I think I’ll up the ante and aim for a short screenplay and a short story per month for 2021! Here’s to a bountiful next year! ☺