by Chris Harris
Welcome to Denham. Bringing A Village TO Life: A Writer’s Journey Part 1
Writing a book was the easy part. Even writing two books at once was relatively easy. What comes in thick and fast to try and trip you up is life.
A year ago, I began to review my business activities so I could attempt to write a book. In short, a collection of short stories based around a fictitious village near Lewes in East Sussex called Denham. Character-driven stories, satirical and tragicomic. But to me, most importantly, a book that is fast-paced.
I have no real background in writing, other than a relatively successful non-league football blog, and I also set up another blog to cover my writing activities. I’m a restless person, and after a few months, after winding down business activities to spend more time writing, my partner and I decided to expand the business. That’s me, restless, energetic and very fickle.
By that point, I’d written most of the stories for the collection. My friend, Louise, did the reads, edits, and proofreading. Also, an artist, she has produced twelve illustrations. The whole thing ended up slightly chaotic, largely due to my inability to focus and bring structure to the process. But as of now, the book is 99% complete and just needs formatting.
I thought it would be interesting to write a blog about the process of writing a book, but it wasn’t. It ended up being about finding time and researching the publishing process online. AI proved very helpful if erratic. It was not an interesting process.
It is probably the same for a lot of new writers; not knowing what you are doing, you put your stories into AI to ask it what it thinks. AI always thinks it is amazing; it is built to validate. It is helpful, but don’t succumb to vanity. Even when you tell it to be highly critical, it feels too sheepish to do so. That was interesting, but not that interesting.
The book was originally called Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Message. But listening to Sandinista! by The Clash one evening after a few beers, and the beautiful song Something About England, a war veteran’s reflections on not even two massive conflicts being able to unite a divided Britain, I decided to pay homage to my hero and mentor, Joe Strummer and decided to call it Something About England, because the name is such a brilliant fit for the book, reflections and observations of a dysfunctional society, all through the prism of an idyllic Sussex village.
I’d never even really thought outside the writing and editing process. But I realise now that is the easy part. The other half is trying to work out how to get the book published and noticed in a system, in a country, where tens of thousands of people are knocking out novels and short stories every year.
You have to bear in mind, through this, that to begin with, my ambition was always to conform to the old adage: everyone has a book in them. I’ve done this for myself and thought I’d maybe get fifty copies printed. A labour of love, it was never about turning it into a commercial punt at being a writer; it’s something I’ve done for myself. But being a competitive sort of person, I eventually thought there was no reason not to actually try to get it read.
So, in this series of blogs, I will first provide a bit of background and talk about my second book, which is a proper novel, also set in the fictitious Sussex village of Denham. Then I will begin to describe the process that I have been through and then move on to the fascinating and equally frustrating process of trying to get some recognition and readers.
So follow my journey, maybe to glory, almost certainly failure, but than itself might be the best story!
#Denham #Short Story #Writing Process #Writing A Book #Short Stories
The Rights of Fans. 