musing for fun – caeblogs

Every time I say these words to myself, I break into song in my head and try not to bob along to a silent beat (I blame Aaliyah and Timbaland for this). But that’s not what this post is about.

Once again, I’m shocked at how long it’s been since I last shared any news on here. Ten months! Seriously, where does time go? At least I can say I have good reason for my prolonged silence this time. I’ve actually been writing – A LOT! Like, a lot, a lot. Brace yourself, this might be a long one.

Over the last twelve months, I’ve finally found the focus to complete a horror novella (my first ever for a publisher’s open submission), an epic fantasy YA novel (my first novel in five years), and a couple of contemporary short stories for competition entries (being longlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize has made me a little more courageous). I spent most of 2020 studying screenwriting and trying my hand at it, so it was a little difficult to get my head back into prose writing. I have to say though, screenwriting was a great way to force myself to process the information I write down differently. It’s all about delivering succinct and punchy dialogue and perfecting the well-worn ‘showing’ not ‘telling’ skill.

I’ve always been a visual writer, so I enjoyed the whole process, but I think it’ll take longer than a year of online self-tutoring to become a pro. The University of East Anglia’s ‘An Introduction To Screenwriting’ free course was also really useful, if anyone fancies giving it a go. I actually wasn’t terrible at screenwriting – I got as far as having a few Hollywood agents request my script based on my logline, but nothing came out of any of this. And if I needed any more indication that prose is my thing, the only notable traction I had was with a short story I entered into a screenplay adaptation competition.  

Anyway, fast-forward to the summer of 2021, somewhere in the middle of my rediscovery of prose writing, I was encouraged by two of my biggest cheerleaders (you know who you are) to look at applying to development opportunities for underrepresented writers. The first one I looked at was the HarperCollins Author Academy. I had a choice of applying to the course for writing fiction or writing for children, and since I’m pretty obsessed with all things YA, I followed my gut and went with the children’s course. As I was waiting to see if I got in, I discovered a children’s publishing workshop for aspiring authors of colour run by the world renowned literary agency, RCW, and the publishing company, Knights Of, in partnership with Megaphone (an Arts Council England funded development programme for writers of colour in England working on projects for children).

First lesson I learnt from this was that a leap of faith goes a long way. When I saw the application, the deadline had passed by a week. It looked so perfect for me, and I was so disappointed that I had missed out on the opportunity, I decided to do something I never usually would. I emailed the organisers to ask if it was too late to be considered.